The Sleep Curse (2017) (DVD) (Hong Kong Version) DVD Region 3

Set in 1990, the film opens with a found footage sequence in which a Malaysian Chinese man goes gradually insane from lack of sleep, turning on his family in violent fashion, apparently due to some kind of evil curse. The focus then shifts to Lam Sik-ka (Anthony Wong), a neuroscientist obsessively studying insomnia and sleep disorders in Hong Kong, who is approached by Monique (Malaysian actress Jojo Goh, The Loan Shark), the sister of the unfortunate man from the opening sequence, who is now suffering from a similar curse herself. Monique just happens to be a former flame, and so Lam agrees to try and help her, partly so that he can use her as a lab rat for his own experiments, and concocts a plan to steal her brother's brain, travelling to Malaysia. Flashbacks reveal dark secrets from WWII, when Lam’s father (again played by Wong) was pressed into serving the deeply unpleasant Chinese collaborator Chow Fook (Gordon Lam, Trivisa) in gathering 'comfort women' for the Japanese invaders, bringing him into contact with a young woman and her twin sister (both played by Michelle Wai, Show Me Your Love), leading to tragedy and death in the past and present.

The Sleep Curse is certainly a bit more ambitious and serious for a film whose raison d'être is providing gory thrills, and Yau works in a lot, from Lam's frankly crazed theories about sleep disorders, through to science, superstition and old school Chinese black magic gong tau, dealing with themes of guilt and karma along the way. Yau has never been one to shy away from tough subjects, and to an extent the film wins points for tackling the issue of WWII Chinese collaborators who worked with the Japanese, as well as the subject of comfort women – though as with his 2014 child prostitution drama Sara, for some viewers these sequences will prove overly-distasteful, and the scenes of rape and abuse are uncomfortable viewing, especially when considered against the film's status as an exploitation schlocker.

While Yau and his screenwriters Li and Lee just about manage to keep things hanging together, the film does suffer from some variable pacing, the flashback to WWII taking up a large chunk of the running time, and never really being woven into the narrative in a coherent fashion. The links between the past and the present and the main twists emerge around the hour mark, though the film seems strangely unfussed about playing them for tension, and it has the odd feel of a horror uninterested in actually being frightening, its ghost scenes feeling perfunctory and its scattered jump scares half-hearted. To be fair, this fits in with Yau's approach to exploitation, and as with Untold Story and others, he's clearly more focused on the social commentary aspects of the plot – and of course, the gore.

The film starts off slowly when it comes to bloodshed, pulling a few potential punches early on in a manner which might leave fans worrying, some autopsy scenes aside Yau leaving things to the imagination. Not to worry though, as the final act of The Sleep Curse really delivers the gore groceries in an incredibly wild fashion, with body parts and viscera flying everywhere and Anthony Wong getting the chance to paint the screen red after playing things relatively calm for the film hour or so. Yau really pushes the envelope, working in some of the nastiest scenes in recent Hong Kong cinema, with one in particular best left undescribed here being hard to watch, and the film is all the more shocking for employing a mix of practical and CGI effects, rather than the anaemic computer carnage seen in other recent genre efforts.

These splatter set pieces are definitely enough to mark The Sleep Curse as not being for the faint of heart, more than earning the film its Category III rating, and it's a very welcome throwback to the earlier days of Herman Yau's career. While not really as memorable as his classics The Untold Story and Ebola Syndrome, the film will undoubtedly satisfy fans, and it has to be hoped that Yau will make a fully-fledged return to shock cinema.

by James Mudge - EasternKicks.com