Fear Factors (2007)
Reviewed by: Brian Thibodeau on 2008-03-03
Summary: Divisible by a factor of dull
Two tepid tales of terror. The first, "Subconscious" directed by Albert Mak, is a Johnnie To-varnished abduction-gone-wrong yarn with Candy Lo as a sympathetic kidnapper inadvertently locked in a room with her mortally-wounded hostage (Ken Cheung), their plight layered up via a series of flashbacks that repeat very recent events to reveal additional characters, their motivations and their perspectives on the crime. Were it told chronologically, however, this would be pretty undernourished, yet far better conceived and executed than the second tale, "Crazy Analysis" directed by Ally Wong and Wang Dao-nan, in which meat-cutter and part-time pervert Terence Yin must spend three days in an empty—and apparently haunted—office complex in order to claim the building as an inheritance. Script by Aric Lung tries for a mix of scares and laughs but fails to deliver on both counts, in part thanks to dubbing by voices that don't belong to the actors. Both segments were lensed on the cheap in unfinished, unfurnished suburban Chinese office buildings—in the case of "Subconscious", at the still-under-construction Legendtoonland headquarters in Zhuhai, a Chinese Special Economic Zone just up the coast from Macau—and the vanilla walls, marble laminate flooring and masonry veneers of both structures don't exactly scream "creepy".
Reviewer Score: 3