Silk Review
This review based on the Singapore released DVD edition of the film available from MovieXclusive.
To label Taiwanese ghost story Silk a horror film is a bit of a misnomer, albeit an understandable one. With a high energy story revolving around the supernatural the horror genre seems the obvious slot for this but with it's blend of police procedural and a heavy American action film influence the film is film plays far more like a supernatural CSI than any Asian horror film to date. Stop and think about the premise or the action on screen for much longer than a second and you'll quickly realize just how incredibly preposterous the entire affair is but thanks to charismatic performances from stars Chang Chen and Yosuke Eguchi and director Chao Pin-Su's willingness to play the goofiness straight and with gusto you're not much likely to care. It's thoroughly disposable and thoroughly popcorn but it is also just flat out entertaining.
Eguchi stars as Hashimoto, a theoretical physicist who has developed a new substance known as the Menger Sponge, a cubelike structure built of human proteins with the ability to trap electromagnetic energy. The supposed goal of his research into the Sponge is to create an anti-gravity device, research that has stalled out badly thanks to Hashimoto's failure to mass produce large scale Menger Sponges and find a suitable source of electromagnetic energy to fuel the device. The solution - ostensibly at least - lies in the realm of the supernatural. If they can capture a ghost Hashimoto and his team will have a perfect, inexhaustible source of energy but it doesn't take a genius to realize that Hashimoto has become obsessed with his ghostly research for reasons that have nothing to do with freedom from the bonds of gravity.
Our other major player is Chang Chen as Ye Qi-Dong, a sharpshooter on the Taiwanese equivalent of a SWAT team reknowned for his super sharp vision and ability to read lips, abilities that place him in demand by Hashimoto when his team succeeds at the impossible and actually traps a ghost. Hashimoto needs to understand why the ghost sustains its energy permanently while most dead souls simply disperse and to do this he needs to recruit Ye to puzzle together his ghost's history using its silently spoken ramblings as clues. Though Ye is sceptical and hostile, Hashimoto is smart enough to realize that understanding what lies in the future for Ye's comatose and terminally ill mother will be enough of a hook to bring him on board. And so the team is assembled to unravel the mystery. Can they learn what makes a ghost? Can they contain the one they have? And what is Hashimoto really after?
Yes, the premise is ludicrous, this is true. And this is even without getting into the Menger Sponge eye drops that allow the researchers to see ghosts and Ye spraying his bullets with Menger Sponge spray when he feels the need to pop a cap or two into a ghostly ass. It's all foolish in the extreme if you stop and think about it but director Chao has assembled a first rate cast and somehow convinced them all to treat the material seriously. They're having fun with it, yes, but they never poke fun at it and that makes all the difference. While the CGI is not up to Hollywood standards Chao is an excellent technician who knows how to shoot and pace a film to wring the maximum visceral impact from it. He's aiming to do nothing more than take the audience on a ride here and he does that rather well. Disposable? You bet. A classic? By no means. But you will never be bored, you will jump from time to time and you get to see a first rate serious dramatic actor - Chang Chen - keep shooting at ghosts long after he should have realized that all he's doing is irritating them and that's got to be worth something.
The Singapore DVD release is something of a mixed effort. The transfer, though anamorphic, is rather soft with weak blacks - a problem for a film that uses shadows so extensively - and with frequent motion blurring. The video quality on the extensive features - an alternate ending, a half hour making of, an eleven minute featurette, deleted scenes and features on stars Chang and Eguchi - is significantly better and the entire batch of features also features high quality English subtitles.
