OUT on DVD May 20th, 2008.
http://www.amazon.ca/
Not just another horror movie shot in Vancouver: this one is based on Chinese superstition. Uwe Boll and Carl Bessai are in the credits. As is Colin Foo. lol
It lasted all of one week at Tinseltown. lol
http://www.theywait.com/
http://www.brightlightpictures.com/home.htm
Story is silly yet horrifying
Early scenes are bizarre, but hang in there
Jay Stone
Canwest News Service
Friday, February 01, 2008
THEY WAIT
Starring: Jaime King, Terry Chen
Directed by: Ernie Barbarash
Running time: 88 minutes
14A (frightening scenes, not suitable for children)
Rating 2 1/2
- - -
You know those scary Japanese movies that always show little girls with long stringy hair standing there and looking at you until you get chills down your back and you are thankful that you're bald and don't have long stringy hair? Well, they've apparently run out of them to remake and startle the bejeesus out of North American audiences, so they've started making their own. And the good news is, the first one was shot right here in Canada.
It's called They Wait, and it's sort of Chinese rather than Japanese, and it's not a remake, but it has that girl with the hair, plus a bunch of other unsettling images that, taken as a whole, are kind of silly and not at all frightening but taken one at a time will have the hair rising on the back of your neck, where it all migrated after falling off your head.
They Wait is both silly and horrifying, a ghost story that comes with an all-Canadian message -- something about the treatment of migrant workers who came in good faith to our shores -- and a northern sense of terror as well, keeping in mind that we produced David Cronenberg and the people who made the Ginger Snaps films. It starts slowly, but by the time the little girl with the hair turns around so you can see the axe gash across her forehead, you may forget how derivative it is.
The in-between stuff isn't so good, but after a slow beginning, there isn't that much of it. Jason (Terry Chen) a Canadian-born executive now working in Shanghai, has to return to Vancouver for his uncle's funeral, bringing his wife Sarah (Jaime King) and little boy Sammy (Regan Oey) with him. Uncle Raymond was famous in Vancouver's Chinatown for being The Bone Collector, the man who exhumed dead workers and sent their remains home to be buried with their ancestors so they could rest in peace. However, it appears a few collections of bones didn't make it, and are they ever sore.
Unhappily, Jason, Sarah and Sammy make their trip during Hungry Ghost Month, a traditional celebration that may sound like National Pickle Day but is in fact a really bad time to travel to Chinatown. The spirits are about, and Sarah and Sammy turn out to be people who can see them. This doesn't sound too frightening, and early scenes are bizarre rather than startling -- a guy with a butchered face eating an orange on a street corner -- but hang in there.
Soon Sammy is poking around the old family factory to the sounds of creaky, hollow metal (ghosts sound like rusty hinges, as any moviegoer can tell you) and he meets with a new friend, a pretty woman whose arms are covered in black ink and whose lips seem to be sewn together. Sometimes she stands around looking haunted, and sometimes she pops up all of a sudden, both of which are pretty good imitations of the stuff from The Ring, The Grudge, and all the other definite article Japanese horror remakes. Barbarash (Cube Zero) gets a lot of mileage out of the trope of converting stillness to suddenness.
There are several stock characters in this, including a wise old pharmacist and some transparently suspicious relatives who have conveniently forgotten everything about the old factory, plus a room shut with the largest chain and padlock since the Hunchback of Notre Dame.
The upshot is also sort of cheesy, and the scene where Sarah and Jason knock down a brick wall to uncover hidden secrets looks like some cheap Edgar Allen Poe knockoff. But They Wait has its share of frights, even if it can't resist an ending that explains everything in a way that the Japanese originals never do.
It won't haunt you, maybe, but it's sure to keep you indoors next Hungry Ghost Month. No one believes in these things, but why take chances?
© The Vancouver Sun 2008
Tags: THEY WAIT trailer Canadian Horror Film Chinese superstition Vancouver BC Jaime King Terry Chen Ernie Barbarash
