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A
one-hit-wonder song writer heads to a deserted
inn in a desperate attempt to find inspiration
for his next track. Since it's not tourist season
at the moment, only the caretaker is left in the
small village. At first it seems like a very nice
and quiet place filled with inspiration but it
doesn't take long before strange things start
happening at the inn. Could the legends surrounding
it be real, or has this songwriter simply lost it
once and for all?
You know, not too long ago I watched a Chinese
horror flick called "The Closet". I did watch the
entire thing thinking that it would probably have
a horror twist or something at the end but it didn't
and I figured that it was probably a drama that
had been falsely marketed as a horror movie so
I decided not to review it. Now I'm starting to
realize that this may not have been the case because
The Deserted Inn has just as little to do with
horror as The Closet did. Sure we see the occasional
ghost lurking around but there's never any real
sense of terror - this was also the case with The
Closet which hinted at horror but never really went
into the horror territory. Perhaps the strict
censorship in China is the reason as to why their
so called horror films are so tame or perhaps they
simply haven't got the slightest clue on how to
create tension, suspense or atmosphere.
I haven't seen many Chinese movies in my days but
out of the ones that I've seen, The Deserted Inn
wins by a landslide when it comes to the cinematography
and production values. Okay so I can honestly say
that I don't remember the name of the main character
and I couldn't be bothered writing it down while
watching the movie but anyway, let's recap the story
a little shall we? A struggling song-writer goes
to a deserted village in hopes of being inspired by
local legends and folk songs, only to discover that
the bed and breakfast that he's staying at is haunted.
Things take a turn for the worse when the caretaker
starts acting strange. What's really going on at
the inn? Could the curse be true (oh don't even get
me started on the curse, it's such a generic tale
that I can't be bothered getting into it).
However, no matter how sappy and cheesy The Deserted
Inn may be, I have to give it some credit for having
a quite solid script behind it. This movie was
obviously made by people with the intentions of
making a genuinely good movie and I appreciate that.
It's unfortunate that the end result was less than
impressive but at least this sparked a small flame
of promise from the country that desperately needs
to look up the term "horror flick" in the English
dictionary. It's well-acted, well-scripted, well-shot
and overall a very nice production, the only thing
that was missing was the horror but they're getting
there. Not worth checking out though.
Nope.
Decent piano-score but overall very generic.
It's not much of a horror flick but as a TV-thriller
it could've worked fine... if it hadn't been so slow.
As a big budget theatrical horror flick however,
this one fails to deliver the goods. If you've seen
other Chinese productions such as The Closet or
Seven Nights you know what to expect.
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