Review of Inner Senses (Tartan Asia Extreme)

Introduction

Featuring the Chinese mega star Leslie Cheung in his last role before his tragic suicide in 2003, `Inner Senses` is the story of Jim Law, a pretentious and unsociable psychologist, who is referred a patient by a colleague at the hospital. The patient is the lovely young Yan and she claims to see ghosts. Jim, a natural skeptic and man of science, steadfastly refutes her tales of the supernatural and, believing ghosts are a manifestation of repressed memory squeezing through into consciousness, attempts to get to the root of the psychological reasoning behind her affliction. When he comes to the conclusion she is too unstable to be helped by therapy, Jim closes her case but embarks on a relationship with Yan. It`s then that, amazingly, Jim starts to see ghosts himself, in particular the apparition of a young girl from his own troubled past.

Video

An anamorphic 1.85:1 soft, low contrast transfer resulting in murky blacks and a dingy palette. There`s also some pronounced edge enhancement which isn`t fooling anyone, a rather off-puting strong red hue to some of the scenes, and some garish brightness. It`s a rather inadequate DVD transfer, of which the flaws will only get past those with smaller TV sets.

Audio

A fantastically rich, but underused, score by Peter Kam and some great effects are given the Dolby Digital 5.1, DTS 5.1 and Dolby Digital 2.0 treatment in the native Cantonese with clear and optional English subtitles. While there`s very little use of the surrounds as a directional soundstage, the 5.1 tracks, in particular the DTS track, deliver a much fuller sounding audio experience. Dialogue is fine and free of aural blemishes. A spot-check of the DD 2.0 provided a fine, if less enthusiastic sounding stereo track.

Features

Purely afterthought extras; an 11-minute `behind-the scenes` feature which is really an opportunity for the cast and crew to discuss how they all got the willies on the set. Trailer lovers can rest easy, as there`s one of them on here too.

Conclusion

After the risible `Unborn But Forgotten`, it`s only natural for the next in the batch of recent releases from Tartan`s Asia Extreme label, `Inner Senses`, to be approached with a certain degree of trepidation. The fear was that Tartan had got themselves a Del Boy deal on a selection of second-rate Asian rubbish with a plan to bung it into their catalogue and hope no-one would bother checking on the quality as they sat alongside such luminaries as `Battle Royale`, `Audition`, and the finest from Hideo Nakata, Kim Ji-Woon and Park Chan-Wook. The fact that the central theme is yet another riff on Haley Joel Osment`s ghoul-o-vision was more cause for concern, especially as 2002`s `Inner Senses` was made during that prickly period when film industries the world over went loopy over that particular vogue in contemporary horror. Lordy, even the international title has a certain `carefully crafted for bandwagon jumping` similarity. So it was a pleasant surprise that `Inner Senses` doesn`t suck harder than a Dyson running power from a jet engine.

Rather than being an all-out, straight-laced horror feature relying solely on bowel-loosening atmosphere and pant-moistening jumps, director Chi-Leung Law guns for a delicate balance between a thought provoking tale on the nature of mental illness and a heckle-raising horror, and bar a few misplaced cheeseball romantic scenes, a flimsy way to progress the main relationship which both cheapens the sentiment and evokes the cardinal horror sin of introducing unintentional humour, it`s pretty successful. The main performances are well-rounded, particularly the late Leslie Cheung`s portrayal of a man who`s unsure whether he`s losing his mind or his theory on the supernatural - and the foundation of his career as a psychologist - is crashing down before his eyes. The imagery for scares and tension is often well-worked, in particular a scene which, despite being almost entirely implied, pound for pound rivals the tongue scene from `Oldboy` for sheer `eeek` factor, and there`s enough spookiness to echo the unease which accompanied the peering over the couch scene from `Kairo`, or Sadako crawling through the idiot box in `Ring`. The narrative does lack drive in the first half of the movie, with the mystery seeming rather sparse and unfolding with a plod rather than a dash, but there`s a swift change of gear as the story ventures into the Jim-centric territory of the second half, revealing much more depth and purpose.

At the downing of the chips, `Inner Senses` is a fairly competent chiller, propelled by some effective imagery and some genuine scares set up by suitable tension - although not enough to be compared fairly to the more popular, first-tier A-horrors - resulting in a film which works much better as a character piece than a late night scare bonanza. Despite being a little unusual for the genre to which it`s inescapably tied to, open-minded A-horror fans will ultimately be rewarded by a film that digs a little deeper than most, albeit at the expense of that all-encompassing gut horror feel.