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| Images courtesy of Arrow Video |
In 2002, Asian horror was back on the rise with Ringu
and Ju-On as well as recent successes in South Korean as well as Chinese
horror. Also coming back were the
anthological horror films ala Creepshow or Tales from the Darkside
featuring short episodes where a number of directors for hire are given a
certain amount of money to make whatever they want. Thus Three (aka Three Extremes II)
was born, comprised of directors from South Korea, Thailand and Hong Kong. With future A Tale of Two Sisters director
Kim Jee-woon, Thai New Wave producer/director Nonzee Nimibutr and prolific Hong
Kong producer/director Peter Ho-sun Chan (The Eye series producer), the
stage was set for a return to anthological Asian horror with each distinct
segment germane to its country of origin playing to particular localized fears
and lore.
So successful was the first Three film that inevitably
a second film dubbed Three…Extremes came about. This time around, however, a Japanese
director in the form of Ichi the Killer and Audition director Takashi
Miike took the place of a Thai director while Oldboy maestro Park Chan-wook
took on the South Korean segment. Further
curious was Fruit Chan’s segment Dumplings which was also expanded into
a feature-length film that was released theatrically alongside Three…Extremes
as well as being included on the North American 2-disc Lionsgate DVD though
curiously absent from Arrow Video’s new forthcoming Blu-ray comprising both horror
anthologies. With the popularity of
Miike and Chan-wook on the high rise in North America, in an unusual twist of
fate the secondary film Three…Extremes came out in the United States
first as a standalone Asian horror anthology with the actual predecessor Three
coming out later as Three Extremes II.
While the Lionsgate DVD is still around for those keen on
checking out the long movie version of Dumplings, despite its exclusion
the new Arrow Video two-disc Blu-ray package of both Three and Three…Extremes
is a sizable picture and sound upgrade over the first edition. Of the first film Kim Jee-woon’s segment Memories
includes the most jump scares and sly use of music and sound to evoke dread
or anticipation while The Wheel channels Thai dance and black magic over
a subset of cursed puppets inflicting the rural village and of the segments is
the Earthiest. The final and third
segment by producer/director Peter Ho-sun Chan shares camerawork with Dumplings
and frequent Wong Kar-wai cinematographer Christopher Doyle and is an interdimensional
supernatural jaunt tightrope walking the balance between the living and the
dead.
Three…Extremes I saw
theatrically in 2004 at the sadly now leveled Main Art Theater and of the
segments far and away the most horrifying one was Dumplings, a segment
which debatably should’ve been poised at the end of the trilogy as it is easily
the strongest. Featuring Miram Yeung and
Bai Ling in top form, it boasts arresting Doyle cinematography, production
design, a starkly terrifying score by Infernal Affairs composer Chan
Kwong-wing and a strong desire to provoke beyond the point of discomfort to
where audience members might eject themselves from their seats.
The meta movie-within-movie Park Chan-wook segment
Cut shows off the director’s penchant for astonishing camera movement
and a sly blend of CG transitions and practical makeup effects work and also
features Oldboy actress Kang Hye-jung, but the story of Lee Byung-hun as
an arrogant film director who gets some kind of comeuppance from a stranger
claiming to be a former extra on his previous projects feels like a halfhearted
attempt to make a short out of his Vengeance Trilogy. Meanwhile the Miike segment is
uncharacteristically slow and mannered for the usually demon speed provocateur
though it manages to be thoroughly creepy and perversely unsettling in that
Miike way.
Arrow Video’s new 2K restorations of both films spread
across two discs come with several newly conducted as well as archival
interviews with the filmmakers and cast members. Featuring archival making-of featurettes from
the previous DVD releases as well as newly conducted interviews with five of
the directors (sans Nonzee Nimibutr), the Arrow set includes reversible sleeve
art, a double-sided foldout poster and an illustrated collector’s booklet
featuring new essay writings on both pictures by Stacie Ponder and David
Desser.
Looking back on them years later,
both films are spooky in their own respective ways but of all the segments Dumplings
still stands out brightly and loud as the crown jewel of both of the Three
anthology film projects as a whole.
While the other films are enjoyable iterations, you could do away with
them and Dumplings would still be the best and most confrontational
short segment. That said, revisiting all
six shorts was like taking a trip back into the early 2000s when Asian horror
at its creative height was only just-then creeping and oozing its way into the
Western hemisphere of filmgoers.
--Andrew Kotwicki
