Coming Soon Review

Disclaimer: Contains spoilers!

Plot Summary: After attempting to pirate a new, soon to be released, movie, a man finds himself being haunted by the film's antagonist.

Review: This is the rare case where the scares are absolutely solid while the story is lacking heavily in depth. The plot is actually pretty good and tries to work within familiar territory without treading old material, but it doesn't do enough to differentiate itself from the pack; there are some awesome concepts here though as I always love the movie within a movie plot element. In a nutshell, if you watch the haunted film "Evil Spirit," Shomba (the ghost in the film) will come and kill you; sounds a lot like Sadako/Samara from "The Ring," right? I do feel the writers worked around this plotline differently enough to not appear as a ripoff, and there are definitely some unique scares and awesome setpieces that are just as good or better. For example: you know Shomba will come out of the movie screen at some point, but, instead of just crawling out, they pull off an impressive effect whereby we see Shomba hanging from rope in the movie and then the film suddenly cuts out while we see the silhouette of Shomba still hanging on the blank screen. As for Shomba herself: she is frightening even though she sometimes has different makeup that creates an odd inconsistency. The movie begins with some people at an early screening of "Evil Spirit" biting the big one who turn out to be the production crew on said film (this will turn out to be important later). The main guy, Chen, and his co-worker, Peoll, try to pirate the movie with disasterous results for Peoll. Eventually, Chen watches the film too and is haunted but seeks aid from his (rightfully) angry ex-fiancee, Som. At first the storyline addresses the "based on a true story" aspect to the film, "Evil Spirit," as Chen and Som investigate who Shomba was and how much of the horror movie is real. This leads to an unexpected twist that the real life Shomba never died and is just at some hospital. In reality, the person that is haunting the film is the actress who played Shomba who actually died on set while filming the hanging scene; the makers of "Evil Spirit" decided to edit together their various takes with the actress dying and add it to the final cut (big mistake!). Unfortunately, the movie just kind of ends after this as Chen gets sucked into "Evil Spirit" and dies. We then see a closing scene of "Evil Spirit" getting a general release, a shot of Som dead, and the implication that Shomba will kill everyone. I do feel they ended strong with the closing, but there was not much of a climax to give us that deeper impact. We don't get a good enough feeling for these characters even though we get some weak, deadend plot points that I think were meant to be character development; for example: Chen and his drug abuse, Som and Chen's relationship breakup needed expansion, and no backstory of the actress playing Shomba (oh come on, give us a name even!). Considering how short this movie was, I wish they had not held so much back or took more time to give us backstory. Even though the scares are so great, the concepts and ideas show so much potential and originality, and the overall plotline is entertaining, it's such a shame there wasn't a better follow through or another dimension added to the characters or backstory; maybe they were anticipating a sequel or something? As it stands, this is a film that effectively creeps you out but leaves a shallow feelings; it just needed that extra bit of oomph to make it as memorable as "The Ring" or "Shutter." If you can find this one, it is definitely worth a view though for the scares alone.

Notable Moment: When Som sees the hanging Shomba at the end of the hallway and then the lights begin to go out one at a time as Shomba grows closer...

Final Rating: 7/10