Movies
Still, it's nice to see Taiwan deliver a good horror film like this. The acting is well above par, the film looks great and the added couleur locale is sure to please seasoned horror fans.
A direct sequel, fueled by an obvious budget injection. Sadly the extra money wasn't spent wisely. The film didn't need the extra 15 minutes and some of the CG was pretty bad. The quality of the first film was still there, but it felt a little diluted. Pretty good still, but a step down from the first one.
Cheng's latest is probably his biggest production to date, sadly the quality of his films isn't following the same trajectory. While not a bad film, The Soul is the type of mystery that renders itself irrelevant by slowly explaining everything away. Touches of crime, sci-fi and drama were added to keep things interesting, but in this case, less would've been more. Liang is a prosecutor diagnosed with cancer. When Wang, the CEO of a major conglomerate, is brutally murdered in his own home, Liang is put on the case. The more Liang finds out about Wang's affairs, the more complex the case becomes. Of course, nothing is what it seems, which is explained through a series of twist in the second half of the film. Performances and direction are decent, the sci-fi elements help to make things a bit more intriguing, but the film is too basic. I'm not a big fan of films that slowly unravel a mystery through some twists and endless explanations, and with 130 minutes on the clock, Cheng takes too much time getting to the end. With the material at hand, I'd hoped for something a bit more cinematic.Read all
