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Tomie
TOMIE is a film based on the super popular manga by the same name written by Junji Ito, and just from hearing what the awesome manga contain you'd think it would be one helluva film... well unfortunately, like so many times before, the movie does not even compare to the book. The flick came out in 1999, one year after the brilliant RINGU, and has spawned a number of sequels to date. All of you reading this and who are used to watching Asian horror knows that Asian films often have a tendency to "take their time" before delivering the goods. And that's of course fine just as long as we do get the goods at the end, and that's the major problem with TOMIE; we get nothing except for...
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Movie Review: Maid, The

Story
During the Chinese Seventh Month, the gates of hell open and for 30 days, the dead walk among the living. There are rules to follow in the Seventh Month: Do not swim during the Seventh Month; do not turn back at night when someone calls out your name; do not talk to strangers on a deserted road. For Rosa Dimaano, all these things are just a bunch of old wives' tales until she starts getting attacked by one ghost after another.

Comments
Been ignoring this movie for over a year for no apparent reason, I decided to take a look at it last night and while I found it to be somewhat all right, it didn't really come anywhere close to being great, or bring anything new into the world of Asian horror. The movie hails from Singapore and while that is cool due to the fact that the country ain't to big on these types of films, unfortunately in the end, The Maid just remains to be a bleak copy of what the Japanese and Koreans have already done before, plenty of times. Still, The Maid gives the viewer a few decent scares, as well as it have some character development that makes you feel sympathy for our "heroine". But the fact is that writer/director Kelvin Tong just tries a little to hard trying to create one horrifying scene after the next, instead of just taking it more easy and use real horror where it would be appropriate. Maybe he never heard the expression 'quality over quantity'.

The Maid tells the story of a young Filipina orphan named Rosa Dimaano (no, she's not Italian) who comes to Singapore to work for a family as...well, you guessed it, a maid. Her mother and father are dead, her 7-year old little brother is sick and her uncle doesn't have money to buy medicine for the little guy - you just gotta feel sorry for the girl. But when arriving in Singapore, it's the start of the so-called Hungry Ghost time which is a month where people pay their respects to all the ghosts that are around them. The family she works for warns her about the ghosts, but Rosa is not scared and just sees it all as old tales that old people tell. Well, that's until her first ghost encounter and from there on, things just keeps getting worse.

The Maid The Maid

I can't really tell you more about the story itself without spoiling it and while I would love to complain about the ending a whole lot, I can't do that either due to the risk of spoilers. Most of the movie works somewhat all right, most of the way through, but towards the end it tries to be a bit more clever than necessary and that just made things worse. Twists and turns are not always great and Kelvin Tong makes the same mistake in the end as he did with the scares in the film - he tries too hard, but since he has nothing of high caliber, most of his attempts for a scary success falls flat.

On the positive side though, having a lot of non-effective scares at least made the movie not seem slow as things kept happening for most of the time. Another good thing was the character of Rosa (played by Alessandra de Rossi) who was innocent and it was easy to feel sorry for her. This girl had to suffer through a lot of crap and even though her character wasn't that strong, it was still enough to make one be able to feel some sympathy for the girl. Other than that, The Maid looked all right and not all the scares were bad, but some were actually quite cool. Thing though is that a couple of good scares and one strong character just isn't enough to stand and build a whole movie on.

Final Comments
Not bad and made for a somewhat good time, although I saw nothing here that I haven't seen a number of times before. The story itself wasn't bad, but the way it was executed could be questioned for sure. If you're a fan of Asian horror, you've probably seen most of what this film has to offer, but it might still actually be worth checking out. I'm glad I saw it, but I would never re-watch it though.

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Maid, The

ALTERNATIVE TITLE:
MOVIE YEAR: 2005
DIRECTOR: Kelvin Tong
WRITING CREDITS: Kelvin Tong
GENRE: Horror
CAST: Alessandra de Rossi, Benny Soh, Huifang Hong
COUNTRY: Singapore
RUNTIME: 93 min

RATING: 4/10

Maid, The Website/IMDB Click here
Maid, The Trailer Click here

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