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May (Shu Qi), Ray (Alex Fong) and their 4 year old son Chi Lo (Ho Tam
Chun) move into a new highrise building, but even on the day of their
arrival, when she loses her little son for a while, May has an uneasy
feeling about the building ... and she thinks she saw someone climbing up
one of the ventilationshafts - not that anybody would believe her though.
Later, when May, who's usually an overprotective mother, leaves her son
with other kids for a couple of minutes at a birthday party, she suddenly
sees him being dragged off teh balcony and supposedly falling down the
building to his death ... only, the boy never hits the ground, he seems to
just have vanished to god knows where.
The police search the whole building repeatedly, but can't find
anything, and soon they seem to give more or less up on the case, wasn't
it for May, who brings to the precinct what she thinks is new evidence
every day.
In fact, Chi Lo was kidnapped by a disfigured woman, Yim Hung (Lam Kar
Yan), who was formerly living as a squatter in the area where the highrise
building is standing now, and whose husband was burned to death by the
police who wanted to remove the squatters. Later, her 4 year old son was
killed in an accident in the area, and when finally the high rise building
was built, she was moving into those areas within the tenants never get to
see, like the ventilation shafts, the waste disposal shafts or the sewage
systems. And from there she could get into every area within the building
unnoticed (which is why the police was never able to find her. When she
saw Chi Lo though, she thought him the splitting image of her own dead
son, and in her deranged state of mind, she took him, just to love him.
Eventually, May and Ray decide to look for Chi Lo, which only ends in
Ray being hospitalized by Yim Hung. Later, May gets a fighting dog, just
to get her son back, but Yim Hung is able to defeat (and kill) even him,
but she loses a finger in the fight. Valuable evidence, May thinks, but
the police are less pleased, even accuse her of being a public threat, and
again do precious little (but at least they finally learn about the
kidnapper's identity).
Having no luck with the authorities, May tries to organize the
neighbours to help her, but they only think her to be a troublemaker and
try to talk her out of finding her son - rather surprisingly though,
considering that many of them have sons too. So May makes one final
attempt to lure Yim Hung out of her hidingplace and fight her on her own
... and wouldn't you know it, it works. Soon the two women engage in hand
on hand combat, and while May doesn't defeat Yim Hung, she at least holds
her own, and eventually Yim Hung returns to her hiding place. There, her
dead husband (of course, it's just her imagination) speaks to her, tells
her that what she does is wrong, so Yim Hung decides to kill herself and
take Chi Lo with her ... thank god May arrives just in time to save Chi Lo
from premature death, while Yim Hung actually jumps off the building to
her death - but not before she and May looked into each others eye and
fuinally came to understand each other ...
The film starts out as a well-crafted horror shocker, only to lose
steam in the second half when what was previously just a monster is
finally established as a real person, Yim Hung, and the film starts
steering away from horror right into the area of social commentary - with
horror and social commentary always having been uneasy bedfellows -, and
that's when the film actually stops to work properly, to a point where the
finale - the extended fight between the two women - is totally robbed of
its impact since one suddenly finds himself rooting for both women to an
extent ...
All that said, the film remains well-crafted throughout and surely
enough has its moments - it just could have been much better.
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