Re-Cycle (VCD) (Hong Kong Version) VCD

Lee plays Tsui Ting-Yin, a popular author whose last three romantic novels have just been adapted into a new film. Her agent (Lawrence Chou in a small role) has already announced that her new book will be a supernatural thriller called "The Re-cycle". Sadly, Ting-Yin is stuck with her writing, and discards many of her ideas soon after she imagines them. At the same time, she has personal issues: a former love - and an inspiration for her successful romance novels - has resurfaced, but she shuts him out, choosing to bury herself in her work instead. But strange things begin occurring to Ting-Yin. She finds long strands of someone else's hair littered about her flat, she begins receiving odd static-filled phone calls, and she even spots a strange red-colored rift in the sky pulling debris into it. At a dinner with pal Rain Li, it's suggested that all these strange phenomena may simply be a product of Ting-Yin's overactive imagination, which is a reasonable idea given her current difficulties writing a horror novel.

Before long, the mysterious events begin to pile up - and then Alice travels through the looking glass. Ting-Yin crosses over into a mysterious fantasy world defined by lurid colors, desolate production design, and bodies falling from the skies. Multiple worlds lay before her - abandoned buildings with bottomless stairwells, color-drained hills beneath ashen-colored skies, corpse-filled forests stripped of green and yellow, a junkyard of oversized forgotten toys. Ting-Yin finds herself wandering from one desolate world to the next, each time being pursued by shadowy creatures and scads of blackened undead. How exactly did Ting-Yin end up in this place, and more importantly, how is she going to get out?

Re-cycle is fun for attentive filmgoers because of its heavy foreshadowing; every single detail given, from dialogue to visuals to whole scenes plays a purpose. This shows thought on the part of the Pang Brothers, which is a rarity for filmmakers currently working in Hong Kong. However, while the screenwriting is thoughtful, it also serves to make the film predictable. At a certain point, it becomes obvious what will happen to Ting-Yin simply because it's mentioned somewhere else first - and in case you forgot, the Pangs use flashbacks to remind you. The only time this doesn't occur is during a pivotal moment near the film's climax, which likely occurs because the Pang Brothers feared they would give away one of the film's biggest reveals. Nice try, but even that pivotal plot point is rather predictable. Re-cycle features some heady ideas, but it's laid out so efficiently that even the most supposedly surprising details can be easily guessed.

Still, the predictability doesn't detract from the overall ride, which is as involving as one would expect - and hope for - from the Pang Brothers. The first half of the film, which chronicles Ting-Yin's growing unease and initial foray into the other world, is vintage Pang Brothers. By now, the image of slow-moving portents of horror coupled with a thundering-drums soundtrack isn't really that scary, but it can still generate plenty of suspense. The Pangs change up their technique effectively too; slow buildups are alternated with pulse-quickening chase sequences, and the sudden shock scares are used sparingly. The other world is rendered with impressive detail, each new world possessing imagery that's alternately beautiful, immersing and horrible. Some of the details are sometimes so over the top that they may appear more funny than scary (the sheer fakery of the pursuing ghouls prevents them from being that frightening), but the atmosphere is more than enough to compensate. Once you get what's going on, Re-cycle can prove quite engrossing.

The film doesn't always click, though. The actual logic of Ting-Yin's brush with the supernatural is explained in an explicit fashion - and even then there are lingering questions. Once in the other world, Ting-Yin befriends a knowledgeable old man (Lau Siu-Ming), who gives her some pointers on making it to "The Transit", i.e. the place where she can return to her own world. At times the other world follows the logic laid out in the exposition, and at other times it starts to feel arbitrary. The Pang Brothers exercise their imagination in creating the other world, but sometimes it seems as if they're just using the screen as a canvas for whatever horrific images they can come up with. It's never clear who all the entities are that chase Ting-Yin, and after a while her journey becomes more plodding than organic. In getting to The Transit, Ting-Yin must cross a number of worlds with specific challenges. The multiple worlds sometimes provide interesting answers to Ting-Yin's questions, but at other times they seem to exist like levels in a video game - each coming complete with a "puzzle" that must be solved before Ting-Yin can move on. It's still involving, but also somewhat transparent in its manufactured action.

Still, there is a cause and effect behind Re-cycle, and the emotions created resonate effectively. Part of this is due to the film's themes, which manage more emotion than the past two Eye films did. Ting-Yin has a real connection to this other world, and though the facts are doled out in an unsurprising and even predictable manner, they seem very felt. Angelica Lee turns in a remarkable performance, made all the more impressive when you consider that for the majority of the film she's basically acting against nothing. For Lee, Re-cycle is basically one big reaction shot, and the actress is never less than convincing. At the same time, she brings weight to the film's more emotional scenes, and appears to give her character a tangible inner life. If Re-cycle succeeds at all, Lee is a very, very large reason why.

Re-cycle does end on a final moment that could leave many in the audience momentarily scratching their heads. The Pangs take great pains to lay down their logic and their rules, and they frequently do so in a way that seems to talk down to their audience. Ting-Yin's understanding is frequently complemented by flashbacks or quick exposition, such that the audience is basically spoon-fed everything throughout the course of the film. Throwing an extra twist out there at the end only serves to confuse things. Still, if one were to follow Re-cycle's logic to its bitter end, then the film's final moments do make sense. The whole may not feel that substantial, but the ending does give the film that final talking point that makes it much more discussion-worthy than the Pangs' past two efforts. And hey, in these quality-starved times, anything that gets people talking can't be all that bad. Re-cycle shows that The Pangs still have the ability to involve and excite as few filmmakers working in Hong Kong do anymore. And again, having Angelica Lee star seals the deal.

by Kozo - LoveHKFilm.com

Re-cycle is the Pang Brothers' return to solid horror after their dubious The Eye sequels. Unlike The Eye films which are set firmly within our world, but slightly removed into the realm where ghosts move unseen to the rest of us, Re-cycle takes us into a land completely alien to the mundane - a fictional land made up from the mind of a fictional character. As is the trope of these stories, such a journey through this wonderland brings insight into the everyday world, just as the journey is fraught with the strange, the beautiful and the dangerous.

There's a nice irreverent sensibility to the introduction of the land of the dead. Being a land of not only ghosts but also discarded ideas, the visual background is richly populated with dilapidated versions of underdeveloped ideas and the just plain cool. It is almost as if every dumb idea the Pang Brothers or the production crew have ever had found its way on screen and were given a new (if entropic) lease on life.

The thrills in the film rarely occur outside of the introduction to Ting Ying in the beginning. Even in this introduction, the thrills vary little more than the stock standard sudden faces and silhouettes in reflection and through smoked glass, supported by eerie music intentionally used to create tension. It is used much more effectively when she first walks through the alleyways of what we otherwise think to be purely the Deadlands and the atmosphere is of being hunted rather than haunted. There's a certain ickiness involved with the land of aborted babies, but when passing through the land of the discarded, it can hardly be avoided.

After a luscious introduction into the world, the majority of the journey is comparatively lackluster and certain scenes feel like filler when zombies and funerary rites are introduced. It is almost as if we needed reminders that this is a journey through the land of the dead or that our protagonists need to meet certain quest requirements (Take OBJECT. Use OBJECT on MONSTER HORDE) before achieving their final goal. The revelation itself is also somewhat telegraphed though it is worthwhile sticking around for the final plot twist.

In the end Re-cycle is an enjoyable enough film with some very luscious scenes in which, ironically enough, much life is breathed into the land of the dead. The Pang Brothers certainly seem to have fun creating a world populated with the unfleshed, no to mention the two-dimensional and the purely derivative. As long you can get in on the joke, the fun communicates through.

7.5 Rusty Amusement Rides out of 10

by Eugene Chan - heroic-cinema.com