They Wait

Introduction

Drawing on real Buddhist tradition and western horror conventions, They Wait is set during the seventh month of the Chinese Calendar, known as the Ghost Month. Buddhists believe that, during this time, the lines between the living and the dead planes are blurred and the dead can visit the living. During the month, Jason (Terry Chen) is called back to his hometown in the Pacific Northwest when his uncle is killed in a freak hunting accident. Jason, of Chinese heritage, returns from Shanghai, where he has been working, with his wife Sarah (Jaime King) and son Sam (Regan Oey).

During the viewing Sam wants to go for a walk and Sarah has a headache so they go off to look for a drugstore. Being slap bang in the middle of Chinatown, all they can find is a herbalist who notices that Sam has a gift of being able to see spirits, something he likely inherited from his mother. Sam repeatedly sees the same ghost of a young woman with black arms and a cut down her face.

When Sam falls seriously ill and the doctors can't find what's wrong, the herbalist appears at the hospital and tells Sarah, who has begun to have visions herself, that her son has been taken by an unsettled spirit and, unless she satisfies the ghost before the end of the month, Sam will die.

Video

A very nice transfer of a well shot film with some effective CGI and ghost effects though there are a couple of distractions: the town is unidentified and the filmmakers went to such lengths to keep it out of the film that they blurred out the side of an ambulance and, in one particular badly framed shot, you can see the bandage/bra over Jaime King's breasts in a shower scene!

Audio

You have the choice of Dolby Digital 5.1 surround or 2.0 stereo and, whilst the stereo track is unproblematic, it doesn't have the impact of the 5.1 mix. This is especially good in the more tense scenes when all six channels are used, really amping up the atmosphere with good use of score, vocals and ambient sounds - the jumps are reinforced by the sound and, though they didn't get me flinching, those of a less jaded nature will be pretty unsettled.

Extra Features

All you get is a twelve minute making of which largely comprises interviews with the main cast and members of the production crew. Obviously made for promotional purposes and separated into four pieces, this is typical EPK guff and not overly informative. Aside from this there is only the theatrical trailer.

Conclusion

In the making of, all involved seem very happy that they have made an intelligent and scary film that draws on various influences to make something new and different. They haven't. They Wait seemed like a remake of an Asian horror film as you get the Caucasian fish out of water (as in The Grudge, The Grudge 2 and Shutter), a protagonist who can see the dead (The Eye) and an angry spirit in the Pacific Northwest (c.f. The Ring).

Despite the derivative nature of the film, it is competently directed - one badly composed shot aside - and acted by the main cast. I'd never heard of Ghost Month and assumed it was an invention of writer/screenwriter Trevor Markwart until I saw the interviews and found out it was real. It's surprising that no one had used it before as the idea of an entire month where the dead can cross into the world of the living seems ripe for horror films, in the same way as Halloween.

By no means completely original and full of horror film conventions, They Wait is a competently made average ghost story with a fair smattering of scares that'll catch out the average viewer and is probably worth a rental for a dark evening - that's probably a first for a Shawn Williamson/Uwe Boll produced film.