Tsui Ting-Yin is a best-selling author and for her new book, she decides to change genre and instead of writing love stories, focus on the supernatural. When writing a chapter for her new book, entitled Re-Cycle, the supernatural she writes about appears to her in real life in the form of a woman. Afraid at first, Tsui Ting-Yin later follows the long-haired woman that appeared to her in order to be able to write more, and is soon plunged into a world of fantasy and great terror.
Obviously, I had heard a lot about Re-Cycle before watching the film, but still I couldn't have told you what it was about, since even if I had heard about it, several times, the descriptions of it were just too vague for one to fully be able to grasp what the story was all about. So when I started to watch Re-Cycle, my mind was basically set to zero and it was all completely new to me. I knew that it would be a horror film and figured (and hoped) that it would have the same effective scares like the Pang Bros film The Eye had, because first time I watched that film, it was really scary. And at first it seemed like it would have the same kind of great horror to it; A young female author writing about the supernatural and all of a sudden there are strange ghostly forces in her apartment. It kept going like that for a while, and since I watched the movie alone in the middle of the night, I figured in was in for a real treat when talking about horror and scares that would do the job. Well, I was in for a treat all right, but very different from what I first had thought things would be like.
Even if the horror elements were there all the way through, I would still like to describe Re-Cycle as a fantasy film that has a horror theme to it rather than a pure horror type of flick. While The Eye was full-on horror from start to finish, accompanied by a great story, Re-Cycle was more like a dark fairy-tale for an adult audience. Actually, the whole fairy-tale feel was present almost all the way through, and was incredibly strong, which was something that made the movie different and made it feel extremely original. First and most, Re-Cycle is a very creative movie and the Pang Bros have really outdone themselves here. There are things in this movie, well an enormous amount of things that were totally new to the eye (not the movie) which made it feel extremely fresh and inventive.
When talking about that it had a fairy-tale-like feel to it, the tale that comes to mind is of course Alice in Wonderland. This basically because of the fact that a woman enters a different world where things are not like in the human world, and are introduced to new characters and sights as well as monsters and things of pure terror. But Re-Cycle just touches the Alice in Wonderland concept, and other than for a few things, the similarities weren't that great, but I felt like that it was still a good way for me to describe to you what we're dealing with here. When comparing it to other stuff, it also had one bigger thing to offer that made you think of Silent Hill, and that was about the darkness coming once in a while and turned the normal scenery into a chaotic hell-like place.
 
It's very hard to describe what Re-Cycle looked like, and I'm sure that words can't do it justice. I would like to start with saying that it's a beautiful looking film, and there are true beauty to be found within, dark as well as light. It offers some disturbing imagery, like a huge cave packed with aborted babies, but also some truly amazing scenery that were just so beautiful, it would be impossible to describe it using just simple words. For the way it looks, Re-Cycle is a definite must see, and I can't stress that enough. You've never seen anything like it, trust me on this folks. Besides that, it looks absolutely smashing at all times. But what you actually get out of the film as a whole is of course a different story.
I think for the fact that I was so focused on that Re-Cycle would be a scary horror film, it somewhat not really ruined it for me, but left me a bit disappointed. If I would watch this film with my mind set on that it would be a fantasy film with some horror to be found within, I guess things would've turned out a bit better. But it doesn't really matter and I must say that it had a lot of things to love as well as countless of things to be impressed by, and when thinking about it now after seeing it, a word like jaw-dropping definitely comes to mind. But it lacked the scares, at least those that would make you sit on the edge of your seat, chewing your nails to the bone, but even so it still had some quailty horror to offer for the sake of it looking extremely good, but unfortunately not providing the proper scares that one's always on the look-out for.
Acting-wise, excuse my language, but it was f**king brilliant and the same goes for the directing, the camera-work, the story-line, all things visual and so on. It's no point of going into detail about these things, because like I said before, words wouldn't do it justice, you just need to see it for yourself, simple as that. But when it comes to the acting, Angelica Lee (who starred in The Eye) makes a wonderful performance as the author Tsui Ting-Yin and leaves absolutely nothing to wish for. The other cast is very good too, but the movie's about her and she sure stands out, even more than she did in The Eye. The score helped to deliver a certain feel at times, as well as it was truly powerful - beautiful - and you couldn't really have asked for more when it comes to the very score either.
My biggest problem I found myself having with Re-Cycle was that I was expecting a really scary horror movie, but that instead proved to be one fantasy film that had a horror theme to it. It's no one's fault except my own, and next time I watch it, I will at least know what I'm in for and I'm sure that'll help. Re-Cycle has wonderful things to offer, and just for the fact of how it all looks, it's worth to check out. And even though the very horror could've been much stronger, I would still like to say that say that the Pang Bros have really outdone themselves here. Highly recommended.
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ALTERNATIVE TITLE: Gwai wik
MOVIE YEAR: 2006
DIRECTOR: Oxide Pang Chun, Danny Pang
WRITING CREDITS: Cub Chin, Sam Lung
GENRE: Horror, Fantasy
CAST: Angelica Lee, Qiqi Zeng, Lawrence Chou
COUNTRY: Thailand, Hong Kong
RUNTIME: 108 min
RATING: 8/10
Re-Cycle Website/IMDB Click here
Re-Cycle Trailer Click here
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