SYNOPSIS:
A group of reporters from China with the help of two local reporters to do a research about the natural ecology topic and investigate the senior maternity health care herbal. They have entered to a tropical forest for this research. It should be a quite relaxed journey but it been hide a crisis. They have been attack by an unknown monster and their friend being die one another, in the same time the landslide has block their way out. They struggle for survive and later calm down investigate and analyze the actual fact.
MOVIE REVIEW:
It
takes a lot for me to hate a film, and frankly I don't understand
how this one got made in the first place given its rather
shoddy attempt at story-telling complete with cheap cliches,
and strangely enough there are descriptive errors strewn across
the synopsis printed on the DVD back cover which puts it on
parallel with some of the laughable ones available on pirated
products.
There
are so many things that are just wrong here that it becomes
an unintentionally bad comedy, and probably one meant for
film students in learning the pitfalls to avoid when attempting
to make a horror film, or at least one with the intention
set out to scare. Bottom line is the story is found to be
wanting, and is too cumbersome
and implausible as it tries to bite off more than it can chew,
made worse by the
last act which seems so disconnected with everything that
had gone before. It's
still pretty amazing how it garnered some award nominations
for best picture,
because this can hardly ever make it to any festivals worth
its weight, and the
casual audience will probably not find a reason to step into
the cinema, or rent
this DVD in the first place.
The opening scene plunges straight into the
story with a group of people getting
chased, and one of them succumbing to the talon-like slash
of this mountain
creature. It continues straight from the synopsis, so reading
that will tickle your
funny bone before you realize this film wanted to be something
more serious. Then
the next thing that strikes you is the mixture of languages
used. I'm all for that
given our multi-cultural demographics here and up North, but
the way it was done,
it's more contrived and made clunky given the translations
that happen on screen
with Mandarin, Broken and accented English and Bahasa Malayu
the languages of
choice.
Acting wise, you can't tell if the actors
here are professionals, given the all
round bad acting with nobody able to emote distress nor fear,
after all, fellow
colleagues and friends are dropping like flies and massacred
in front of their eyes
by the titular creature. Yet they behave quite nonchalantly,
with the survivors
looking as if they're glad that it's someone else who had
gone to heaven, rather
than themselves. And this stark absence of mystery and danger
is the failure of the
filmmakers to create (well, mainly Jeffery Wong wearing multiple
hats), relying on
really cliché sound effects to try and punctuate what
they think is scary, only to
come off as quite laughable in their desperation.
Not only that, the special effects are quite
feebly done, lacking the realistic,
vivid touch, being so raw around the edges you can pinpoint
exactly where they're
employed. The basics of makeup and costuming also cannot get
past a big F, with the
titular mountain spirit which turns out to be sans anything
supernatural, another
comedic attempt at trying to be scary through its cheap army
camouflage make up and
costuming that looks like CB leaves being stuck on, that even
BMT recruits can fare
better.
Mountain
Spirit is indeed a shocker – shocking that something
like this could have evaded quality control, and at best it
can pass off as a rookie school course attempt at making a
film gone awry.
SPECIAL FEATURES :
None
AUDIO/VISUAL:
Shot mostly in the daylight, the visuals don't need
a discerning colour palette in its presentation, and there
isn't a need for a top of the line audio capability as there's
nothing here that will absolutely challenge your surround
sound speakers.
MOVIE RATING:
DVD
RATING :
Review
by Stefan Shih
Posted on 10 May 2010
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