A man caring for his cancer-stricken wife starts to suspect that she might be a ghost in this 2007 Danny Pang outing…
It’s fair to say that by the end of the 2000s, the Pang brothers Danny and Oxide were starting to struggle a bit, trying to recreate the success of their 2002 global smash The Eye by balancing sequels and rip-offs with more imaginative fair. The two by then had also moved more into solo efforts, and while they worked together on the likes of Re-cycle, The Eye 2 and The Eye 10 (aka The Eye Infinity), there were also a number of Pang Brother, rather than Pang Brothers productions. 2007 was a busy year for Danny Pang in particular, and as well as co-directing their foray into Hollywood, The Messengers, he also helmed the Shu Qi-starring Forest of Death, and In Love with the Dead, pitched as a more character-driven supernatural drama.
The film follows Stephy Tang as the unfortunate Wai, diagnosed with cancer and being looked after by her loving, loyal boyfriend Ming ( Shawn Yue). This proves to be a difficult task for Ming, not least since she soon starts acting very strangely, lurking around in their dark flat all day, and falls first into depression, and then into the arms of co-worker Fong (Yoka Yue), resulting in even more angst. Living with Ming and Wai is her younger sister Ping, (Zeng Qiqi) who one day remarks that the poor woman looks like a ghost from the horror comics she loves reading. From then on, things take a turn for the sinister, as Ming begins to suspect that she may well be right.
As might be expected for a film dealing with terminal illness, In Love With the Dead is a pretty gloomy affair, for the first half at least, with plenty of agonising, pining and tortured silences. However, although the relationships in the film are believably awkward and unconventional, they are curiously emotionless despite Pang’s best efforts to underline every supposedly moving scene with soaring sappy music. Much of this is down to the fact that there isn’t a huge amount chemistry between any of the stars, with Ping easily being the most sympathetic character, from whose perspective the best parts of the film are seen. To be fair, and since all of the cast turn in decent performances, it is likely that Pang was aiming for a subtle rather than overtly melodramatic approach, though the film’s romantic triangle never really clicks, and as a result the first forty-five minutes or so do tend to drag.
This is offset somewhat by a few weird though essentially pointless and misleading events thrown in to spice things up, and a potentially fascinating but woefully undeveloped theme regarding the clash between modern Western-style and traditional Chinese medicine, though even these aren’t quite enough to keep the viewer truly engaged. By this point, the film comes across as little more than an even more low key and slow moving companion piece to brother Oxide’s 2006 Diary (which also starred Shawn Yue in another tale of ambiguous hauntings), with worryingly little reason to suspect things will improve.
Thankfully, In Love With the Dead picks up immeasurably around the halfway mark after little Ping makes her amusing observation. Certainly, Pang is far more comfortable with the film’s supernatural and more leftfield elements, and the pace picks up immediately as it bursts into crazed life with lots of cheap scares and ghostly red herrings. The gloomy, ominous atmosphere, which had until then only served to slow the proceedings down even further, comes to the fore and quite suddenly makes sense, as do several previously innocuous-seeming plot points which are now exploited for far more suitable purpose. The question asked earlier in the film, ‘would you do silly things for your beloved?’, is finally answered with a resolute ‘yes’, as the plot takes all manner of wacky turns in the lead up to the ghoulish triple twist ending, none of which make much sense, but all of which are highly entertaining. As such, although it is hard to take some of the scares and supposedly sinister occurrences seriously, and the film never comes across as a particularly coherent whole, these latter stages are very enjoyable.
Given this sudden shift in tone, its hard not to think that In Love With the Dead would have benefited considerably had the leaden opening stages been trimmed, or indeed that the whole affair would have worked better as the kind of madcap ghost comedy so popular in Hong Kong during the 1980s – which the film basically resembles aside from its needlessly po-faced approach. However, thanks mainly to a hysterical second half it remains an entertaining and worthwhile slice of supernatural soap opera, which does at least show Danny Pang attempting to branch out somewhat, and which is a worthwhile watch for Pang completists and the curious.