Prior to the Chinese New Year, there are many Hong Kong movies opening. At least five movies are being released. Out of those "Troublesome Night VII" seems to be the most appealing. The main reason is that "Troublesome Night VII" is obviously part of a long-lasting series that has done well at the box office. However, unlike the previous films that were directed by Herman YAU Lai-to, NAM Yin (the producer and the screenwriter of the series) assumes the task of directing.

Like "Troublesome Night 6," there is only one story in the movie. A music video team, headed by Alex (LAI Yiu-cheung), comes to an outlet to produce a music video for a performer called Amanda (Amada LEE Wai-man). However, since the first day of production, weird things begin to happen. First, there are heard strange voices that seem to be asking the whereabouts of a girl named Ying. While filming, the crew sees the shadow of ghosts. Although the crew and Amanda are scared, Alex wants to continue. More eerie things continue to happen to increase the level of fear until finally Grammy Ping (Helena LAW Lan) appears and reveals the background behind the current haunting - the tragic love story between Lok (Louis KOO Tin-lok) and Ying (CHAN Chung-ling) . . .

To be honest, "Troublesome Night VII" is not a good movie. One of the main problems is the story. In the advertisement, it is claimed that this is the first "Troublesome Night" movie where the events occur during daylight. Unfortunately, this adds nothing to the film which really doesn't contain anything that makes it special. The only scares come from the sudden appearance of some of the characters, such as Officer LOUI (Simon LOUI), NG Chi-hung, and Grammy Ping. However, the technique only works for the first few times. Once repeated too often, the style doesn't work as well on the audience for the remainder of the story. In addition, the main portion of the story is about the weird things that happen during the filming of a music (MTV) video. However, the filmmakers present us only pieces of the MTV clips that do not have a relationship to the ghost story. Watching the filming may pad the movie's running time, but it also makes it boring.

NAM Yin had several subplots that could have been developed to make an interesting movie. The relationships between Alex and Amanda, SZE Yim-chi and LEE Wing-ho, and HUI Si-hung and LAW Koon-lan were all avenues the directors could have taken to enhance the film. The current relationships could have played off the tragic love story between Louis KOO Tin-lok and CHAN Chung-ling. Sadly, the movie is poorly constructed and putting the emphasis on the pointless MTV material was a bad choice and ruins the film. With the love story of Lok and Ying left undeveloped, the ending of the movie is much less impressive than one would expect.

In short, "Troublesome Night VII" has got some decent ideas, but it falls to make good use of its characters, is poorly paced, and contains an underdeveloped plot. In addition, the sudden cameos fail to improve the quality of the movie.

Written by Ryan Law from Hong Kong Movie DataBase on 20 January 2000.