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 he Hong Kong motto is, "If it sells tickets, copy it
ad nauseam until it no longer sells tickets." As a result of that motto,
2002 has been the Year of the Ghosts -- or, to be more precise, the Year of
People Seeing Ghosts. Finally jumping on the "I see dead people"
bandwagon 3 years after M. Night Shyamalan made seeing ghost cool with "The
Sixth Sense", Hong Kong has delivered a spate of similar movies in the
previous year. "The Eye"
had Angelica Lee seeing ghosts after a cornea implant; "Sleeping
With the Dead" had Jordan Chan literally sleeping with not one, but two
ghosts; and then there were the "I see dead people but it's funny!"
movies.
"Inner Senses" stars the late Leslie Cheung as
Jim, a psychiatrist who gets referred a troubled young woman (Karena Lam) who
claims persistent ghosts are haunting her. More psychological thriller than
actual horror, "Inner Senses" attempts to burst out of the I See Dead
People genre by offering up a psychological explanation for the whole ghost
phenomenon. In short order it's proven that Karena Lam's Yan is troubled not by
ghosts, but by her own past, and once she's able to defeat her own demons, she
no longer needs to "see" ghosts to make up for it.
To be honest, "Inner Senses" is a somewhat
deceitful film. It opens as a standard I See Dead People movie, with ghosts
popping up all over the place to freak out poor Yan. But as soon as Cheung's Jim
enters the picture, we are told in no uncertain terms that all of the
supernatural elements have an explanation, and it's all a matter of digging deep
into the psyche to locate the issue and then confront it. I wouldn't go so far
as to say that the explanations are very well thought out, but they are quite
interesting. Is our perception of ghosts really just stored up useless memories
given shape?
The direction by Chi-Leung Law ("Double Tap") is
polished and slick, and the director keeps the film moving and nicely paced so
things never get boring. The screenplay by Yeung Sin Ling offers up a couple of
possible scares in the first 20 minutes, but the movie is devoid of scares from
that moment on. The final 10 minutes, when one of the characters is literally
chased by his past, is laughably bad and really defeats the whole purpose of the
movie. Why did the filmmakers throw away the film's psychological angle for a
series of silly special effects? And really, how scary is a teenage girl in a
school uniform with pizza sauce on her face?
While Karena Lam is no Angelica Lee, she does offer up a
sympathetic heroine to keep us in her corner. Although the screenplay makes it a
point to have other characters mention that Lam's Yan is self-centered and a
selfish drama queen, she never comes across as such. It makes you wonder if the
screenplay and Karena Lam's interpretation of the Yan character got crossed
somewhere during production. Someone should have taken another look at that
screenplay and made sure it matched up to the movie. Some editing, I believe,
was in order.
In his last film before his unfortunate suicide earlier
this month, Leslie Cheung proves that the world is going to miss his talent. The
man at the center of some of the most memorable movies the Hong Kong film
industry has ever produced, from John Woo's Heroic Bloodshed movies to the
breakout "Farewell My Concubine", is dependably good here. The only
problem I have is that I wish the screenplay hadn't shown all of its cards so
early in the movie. By the time the movie leaves Yan to focus on Jim, any viewer
that has been paying attention knows where the next 40 minutes is going.
"Inner Senses" is not a bad movie, but it's not
anywhere near as frightening as "The
Eye". Some of the ghost make-up leaves a lot to be desired, although
the movie's psychological take on the ghost phenomenon is a welcome change to
the I See Dead People genre. But through it all, one gets the feeling that
"Inner Senses" never really rises to its fullest potential.
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