Night Corridor 2003 妖夜迴廊

Summary : An artist investigates the uncanny death of his twin brother who was gnawed and clawed to pieces by wild monkeys. He ends up grappling with the beast within, after being gobbled alive by a ravenous nympho and getting sucked into in a series of grisly murders.

But eerier stuff awaits him in a colonial library guarded by a night porter who may be the Devil Incarnate. A danse macabre choreographed with European flair and painterly texture, transposed from the Satanic world of Polansky and Goya to a post-97 Hong Kong of paranoia, animal appetite, and – monkey business. While majority of the show is centered on morbid horror. The scene in which Daniel Wu holds Allan Wu at gun point and forces him to perform oral sex maybe enough to please others.

Year:              2003

Director:      Julian Lee Chi-Chiu

Writer:          Julian Lee Chi-Chiu (from his own novel)

Producer:    Daniel Wu, Stanley Kwan Kam-Pang

Cast:              Daniel Wu, Kara Hui Ying-Hung, Guk Fung, Eddy Ko Hung, Coco Chiang Yi, Allan Wu

Review :

Now firmly established as a popular figure in both the commercial and art-house sectors of Hong Kong cinema, hot young actor Daniel Wu (BISHONEN, ENTER THE PHOENIX) co-produced this eerie supernatural drama with Stanley Kwan – director of ROUGE (1988) and LAN YU (2001) – which Wu has described in interviews as: “A dark, non-typical Hong Kong story, with a more European feel to it than most”.

Based on a novel by writer-director Julian Lee, Wu plays Sam, a photographer pursuing a successful career in London, far away from the ghosts of his childhood in HK, where he suffered years of sexual abuse at the hands of a ‘benign’ family priest (Eddy Ko). However, he’s forced to return home when his alcoholic mother (Kara Hui) informs him that his twin brother Ah-hung has died following a horrific incident in which he was torn apart by monkeys (talk about creepy!). Beset by grief and confusion, Sam seeks answers from the ageing night porter (Guk Fung) of a local library which his brother used to attend, where he’s introduced to Ah-hung’s strange girlfriend (mainland model Coco Chiang) whose devotion to Sam isn’t as innocent as it first appears. But Sam’s return to HK has also rekindled his affections for a childhood friend (Allan Wu), whom Ko accuses of being partly responsible for Ah-hung’s death. The mystery continues to deepen…

Filmed in twelve days on a limited budget and photographed with noir-ish intensity by debut cinematographers Wong Chi-ming and Charlie Lam, this multilayered shocker recalls the escalating paranoia suffered by Mia Farrow in ROSEMARY’S BABY (1968), though the Gothic tone and slow-burning tempo of Lee’s film owes as much to similarly-styled Asian entries like RING (1998) and JU-ON: THE GRUDGE (2003). Lee maintains a cohesive narrative structure, despite his fractured editing style and non-linear approach to the material, whilst Wu anchors proceedings with his skillful portrait of a sensitive artist cast adrift in a threatening landscape.

Many of the film’s themes and images are linked explicitly to the famous painting ‘The Nightmare’ by 18th-19th century artist Henry Fuseli an image whose relevance only becomes clearer as the movie draws to its enigmatic conclusion, and while the stark location photography evokes an appropriate measure of creeping dread, Lee further unnerves his audience by introducing odd, disconcerting noises into an otherwise benign soundtrack, while half-seen images flicker briefly at the edges of the frame.

Though it plays like a character study, the film is intensely cinematic in the usual HK manner, and while the ending is a little abrupt and confusing, events become clearer on subsequent viewings. Like BLOW-UP (1966), this is a movie which refuses to indulge the viewer’s expectations…

Daniel Wu is in every scene, and he’s hypnotic and beautiful and deeply tragic, all at the same time; tormented by the shadows of an unhappy childhood, and consumed by the darker shadows of an impending catastrophe, he tempers the anguish of his brother’s death with the fortitude of a natural survivor. Chiang essays a character not unlike the nightmarish Sadako in the Japanese “Ring” series, an innocent-looking pawn of satanic forces, while Guk’s kindly night porter turns out to be harboring more than a few guilty secrets of his own (my lips are sealed).

Slow-going, but bewitching and dreamlike in the best possible way, the movie was given a Category III (adults only) rating by HK censors for some frank sexual material, including an extraordinary scene in which Sam sprawls beneath his bedclothes, masturbating langurously over a recent photograph of the young man he once loved and lost (now a hunky radio DJ). Few actors of Wu’s standing have ever been so daring in HK cinema.

Director’s Comments

NIGHT CORRIDOR , a Hong Kong Arts Development Council sponsored feature film project, is a psychological thriller cum story of unrequited love with post-colonial Hong Kong as its backdrop.

Adapted from Julian Lee’s novel of the same title, inspired by a gothic painting by Fuseli called ‘Nightmare’, NIGHT CORRIDOR is about law and desire – our darkest, deepest human yearning, like the evil spirit embodied by the witches in Goya’s painting. In the film, a colonial library in Hong Kong is represented as a killing ground for the devil.

Through the protagonist’s ( an émigré artist returning to Hong Kong from London, U.K.) investigations into his twin brother’s murder by wild monkeys, he uncovers a pile of skeletons in his cupboard. His final downfall into Satan’s abysmal trap, resembles unfolding of the relationship between Mickey Rourke and Robert De Niro in ANGEL HEART.

The film echoes the atmospheric style of Roman Polanski’s THE TENANT and REPULSION with supernatural elements reminiscent of X FILES and the dark, warped universe of David Lynch掇 BLUE VELVET. The film is largely composed of night shots and interiors, with a mise en scene that evokes the rich textures and lighting of Gothic paintings s well as Dutch Masters.
— JULIAN LEE

《妖夜迴廊》是一套低成本心理震慄電影，全片充滿波蘭斯基電影中如怪房客/冷血警魂的怪異詭秘演譯手法，以氣氛制造心理驚嚇。影像帶有古典歌德式象徵主義色彩，並加入少量大衛連治的黑夜迷離感性。如《藍色夜合花》的暗毒妖夜情調和X FILE的迷離元素。

全面多以夜景及室內景為主，除了一座吸血疆屍式圖書館外，其他場景十分簡單，人物設計獨特，憑主角性格及特出演技，營造宿命的緊張氣氛，以這種心理恐懼去推動故事的發展。劇情推展似羅拔迪尼路和米奇洛基的《天使追魂》(Angel Heart)，將觀眾帶入一個萬劫不復的報復圈套內，令他們代入關心緊張主角的行為思想和遭遇，一步步的走向最後戰鬥滅亡的結局。

本片是由香港演藝發展局資助的獨立電影制作，集合香港電影藝術的精英，幕後班底包括由斐聲國際的香港藝術電影大師關錦鵬及吳彥祖聯合監制，由攝影電影豐富經驗的情慾高手李志超編劇及執導(前作《心猿意馬》，本電影根據其小說《妖夜迴廊》改編)，由攝影CHARLIE LAM 擔任攝影(《太太》康城電影節作品)，由王家衛所有電影的燈光師黃志明設計攝影鏡頭及燈光，由暗戰2的金馬獎剪接師邱志偉剪接，由張世宏(《幽靈人間》《異度空間》) 擔當美術指導，由音樂鬼才恭碩良第一次突破配樂，這班底可確保能拍出一部高質素的藝術電影，又極可能是最過癮最有創意的認真製作。