Three...Extremes * * * *

If you like a good spicy Asian meal, then you’ll enjoy this little number served up in three terrifying courses. It features an all-star line up of directors, including Hong Kongs Fruit Chan, Koreas Chan Wook Park and Japans Takashi Miike. Unlike most American Horror Films, these short works shun the tired supernatural themes for more modern psychological chills. While genre is the only thing they seem to have in common, there is a malevolent undercurrent at work that makes them all fit perfectly together.

Dumplings by Hong Kong director Fruit Chan may be the most disturbing of the vignettes. Lacking the usual supernatural conventions, it is a meditation on our obsession with youth and beauty. The story follows Mrs Lee, an aging actress with a failing marriage, who is desperate to turn back the clock. In a run down apartment complex, she meets a strange woman called Aunt Mei with an even stranger beauty secret. Out of all three, this was definitely my favorite. It is also the one most likely to disgust and offend.


Cut is another of Chan Wook Park's disertations on the human condition. Best known in the U.S. for his 2003 tale of revenge Oldboy, Park delivers the most violence and gore of the segments. It concerns a professional movie "extra" who feels that life has been extremely unfair to him and all too kind to a famous director. Held captive on the set of his own movie, the director is given a lesson he won't soon forget.


Box is Takashi Miike's dream like story of death and regret. It tells the story of a woman named Kyoko who is haunted by the loss of her sister in a tragic fire. Miike is known for his graphic violence and gore but here he shows a great deal of restraint. The use of color and style is in some ways reminiscent of Dario Argento's Suspira. And, like a dream or more aptly, a nightmare, it is a disjointed narrative that will often have you wondering what's real and what's not.