Lingering Movie (古宅) Review | by tiffanyyong.com

Recommended Audience: Fans of Athena Chu 朱茵, Louis Cheung Kai Chung 张继聪, Yao Tong 姚童, Bob Cheung Yin Pok 张彦博, Mak Ho-Bon 麦浩邦, Derrick Tao 涂霆骏 and horror movie fans

Lingering Movie (古宅) Synopsis

On New Year’s Eve, Qingyi (Athena Chu) and her son, Dawa, were waiting for her husband to come home from work but he never showed up. Meanwhile, Dawa keeps seeing a stranger who is invisible to Qingyi. Leaving Dawa under the care of her neighbour, she heads to the village to find out her husband’s whereabouts.

Qingyi returns home and sees a stranger hiding in her house. Upon hearing about his mother’s death, Xinzhong (Louis Cheung) returns to his hometown. When he was handling issues regarding her death, a real estate agent appeared and asked Xinzhong to sell his mother’s mansion. Xinzhong must now find the property certificate to sell it. While finding it, strange things keep happening. Are these really just accidents, or was Qingyi warning her son?

Lingering Movie (古宅) Viewer Rating: 2.5/5 **

Lingering Movie (古宅) Review:

I was looking forward to watch this film when I first saw the trailer. It was edited to look like a cross-dimensional horror film which got me really intrigued. However, it was nothing like how the trailer looked.
Stripping off her sexy image, Athena Chu plays a plain village woman for a change. I was slightly disappointed with her performance initially as I felt that her emotional changes did not flow very well. It felt disconnected, as if the editor had included the handle (moments before the director shouts action) for her scenes. However, her moments in the later parts were absolutely fantastic and emotional.

Louis Cheung plays the ambitious grown-up son and he was a natural when it comes to be the son who can’t be bothered with his naggy and insecure mum. Both the actor and the directors manage to successfully bring out frustration of a youth who can’t wait to fly as well as the love and sacrifices of a mother. I teared at the emotional scenes.The movie has a innovative and interesting concept, combining parental love with horror elements. However, there were a lot of misses in terms of script writing and visual storytelling as there were a lot of plot-lines left unaddressed. For example, the business collaboration that Xinzhong was required to find another large sum of money, did not have a conclusion at the end of the film. The paranormal scares that Xinzhong’s nice girlfriend were subjected to (when she was all along discouraging him not to sell the house) were not logical too.

The storytelling did not make use of Chekhov’s Gun, and this made the film which could have been really meaningful amounted to a horror story with disappointing and unoriginal scares.

Do You Know?

Director Mak shared that the horror in this film was created from the fear of losing loved ones.

Athena Chu had to spend more than 10 hours doing the elderly makeup look. She described how it was claustrophobic and that it felt like being buried alive by mud and soil.

Behind The Scenes and Interviews

Check out Lingering Movie (古宅) Facebook Page!
Lingering Movie (古宅) is out in cinemas on 18 October 2018.

xoxo

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*Disclosure: Invitation by Shaw Organisation. No monetary compensation was received for the movie review.