WTF Asia?!?: Three..(Extremes II)

Let's take a look at the confusion caused by delayed DVD releases in North America.  In 2004, we get a freaky anthology film called Three...Extremes.  Featuing such directors as Takashi Miike, it had some good horror moments, freaky imagery and was just generally trippy.  A couple years later, they released it's sequel Three...Extremes II.  However, one look at an accurate DVD sleeve description creates some confusion.  You see, this movie is dated 2002!  Allow me to clear this up through the magic of internet research: this film is actually Three, the original film with different.  That's why they added the '...' between 'Three' and 'Extremes,' implying that it was a(n extreme) follow-up.  So is this a case of the original topping the sequel or is it a rare case (not the upper case version) of a sequel that surpasses the original.  Find out in my dumpling-free review of...

Our first tale is called 'Memories' and begins with a super-slow tracking shot of a man on a couch.  Is he dead?  No, although the audience is getting there with this shot taking up three full minutes.  'Quick, honey, turn it to Channel 3- paint is drying!'  Seriously though, this one of those Asian horror tales that doesn't really tell you anything, has a frigid pace and thinks that it can just throw some weird imagery at you once or twice to keep you hooked. There are two plots that sort of run their own course.  One of them involves the mopy guy who can't find his wife.  The second involves a woman (presumably his wife) who wakes up on the street with anmnesia.  He mopes around, hangs out with her family and just generally looks depressed.  Her story involves her wandering around trying to figure out what is going on.  Both of them have some flashbacks/dreams that appear to explain everything.  After about forty minutes, we learn that the man abused her and she left...but neither one of them really remembers this.  Um, okay?  Take Two...

The second story comes to us from Thailand and involves a small village dealing with the curse of some dolls.  Don't get excited- it's not as interesting as it sounds.  The whole narrative is bogged down by some weird freak-out moments (read: the only interesting parts) which make things very hard to decipher.  From what I can tell, the Village Elder stole/purloined the dolls and scoffed off their curse.  A few people die, but never in that dramatic of a fashion.  One woman appears to bleed from the eyes and is next scene hanging from the ceiling dead.  Another man dies of...um, something while dressed up like one of the dolls for a festival show.  The Elder's assistant warns him about the curse, but he ignores all of that.  Eventually, the Elder lashes out at one of the dolls and sets his room on fire, requiring him to be saved.  The Elder's Assistant saves a local girl from drowning, so she repays him by slashing at him with a knife...which causes the movie to flashback to an earlier part.  Was that a dream?  A vision?  Who knows?  I sure as hell don't.  Alright, Take Three...

The final tale involves an obsessive man trying to ignore science in favor of getting what he wants.  The narrative focuses on a man and his son who move into a mostly-empty apartment building.  The kid disappears one day and the father ends up at the apartment of the man from earlier.  He ends up getting captured as the man explains that he wants him around to see his wife return from 'death' in two days.  Like the other tales, this sounds interesting, but proves to be another slow-moving tale.  The guy is stuck in the apartment for a while and even tries to make nice.  When he turns on his captor, it just gets him hit on the head.  As the second day approaches, the captor tells him about how science is wrong and he knows better.  When the time comes...the woman doesn't wake up.  The police rush in and capture the man, since the kid reported the dad missing.  As the police take away the wife's dead body, the man chases after the car and stops in the road, only to be hit in a pretty hilarious computer effect.  The film flashes back to his perspective and shows that he see the wife's eyes blink before he died.  Rather than ending there, the film takes another five minutes explaining the back-story of the man.  *Sigh*

Wow, this was pretty disappointing.  Don't get me wrong, it's not a bad movie like a lot of the stuff I see.  It was just not all that interesting.  Let's compare this to Three...Extremes for a moment, shall we?  That film had a tale about a woman eating fetuses to stay young.  Do we get anything that interesting here?  No.  How about the second tale involving a crazed actor torturing a director and his wife?  Again, no.  Probably the most comparable is Miike's odd tale, but even that was a little interesting.  In hindsight, it is easy to see why they added the 'Extremes' to the ending, huh?  The key thing to understand is that the three directors for this film are not really horror directors.  Hell, one of them is the guy who directed The Love Letter, a romantic comedy starring Kevin Costner!  The one thing that these have going for them is that they are chock full of atmosphere, like most Asian horror films.  Ultimately though, the stories have to go somewhere and do something unique.  These ones just don't deliver.  Your opinion might be different- I freely admit- but I was pretty let-down by this.

Next up, a crime drama/action film with a title greater than the sum of it's parts.  Something this strange can only come to us from China.  Stay tuned...