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Three... Extremes 2 AKA 3 Extremes II AKA Saam Gaang AKA San Geng
R2 - United Kingdom - Tartan Video Review written by and copyright: Ben Austin & Noor Razzak (1st January 2001). |
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The Film
 The film "Three...Extremes 2" is a collection of three horror short films from three filmmakers from Asia. The series of films are cut one after the next. You'll notice that these films were made before the films featured in "Three...Extremes", that's because this release was distributed under that title to capitalise on the success of the previous film. "Memories" is the first film from South Korean filmmaker Ji-woon Kim. A man (Bo-seok Jeong) lies asleep on a sofa, he wakes, he is troubled, he sees things that shouldnt be there. A doll, a woman that looks like his wife, all without sound, it is like a dream. SO begins "Memories", a fantastic psychological thriller from Ji-woon Kim. The film unfolds in some confusion, with two stories excerpted into each other, one moment we are with the troubled male protagonist, the next with his wife (Hye-su Kim). Slowly information is gathered, the wife is missing, possibly dead. If she is dead, how did she die? If she is dead, then why is she trying to get home? What really happened? Was it an accident? Was she murdered? Is she in a hospital, perhaps in a coma? As the film progresses the two stories begin to reconcile, the events becoming more closely linked, there is a palpable sense that something is going to happen that explains it all. Then with one scene all is explained, all the lose endings tied up neatly, and we are left wondering, what will happen next? Stylistically "Memories" is an interesting work. There is very little use of music and sound to heighten the dramatic sense of a scene. Instead, the film relies upon the visual imagery to create drama. While the events of the film do go into a variety of different locations, most is focused around the apartment, or the building it is in, and as the two stories begin to merge a new angle is shown of a previous scene. So where Bo-seok Jeong's character was lying on a sofa to start, with the camera directly fronting him, a later scene has him sitting on the floor where the camera was, which physically links the two stories. There are several great aspects to this film, it is tight - there is not a lot of flab to the story, nothing really detracts from the core stories. The cinematography is clean, focused, and makes great use of short, sharp imagery that then transition into the next scene. The acting is solid, believable, I especially like the composure of Bo-seok Jeong. Overall I would strongly recommend this short film. "The Wheel" follows by Chinese filmmaker Nonzee Nimibutr. This film frankly bored me, it is a paint by numbers voodoo doll style horror, with the only original part being that it is Asian influenced rather than the Western style voodoo style horror. For all that cultural difference, it isnt really that different in basic concept. The story is set mainly in a puppet / dance school, which apparently makes more sense if one knows more about the cultural practices of China. The story follows a variety of figures who are involved in this school, ranging from the master, to the new boy, to the jealous favourite. Here the story isnt too bad, it revolves around murder, and revenge. I could not get past the lameness of the story, despite the cool surroundings. The third and final film is "Going Home" from Thai filmmaker Peter Ho-Sun Chan. A father and his young son move to a condemned, nearly empty apartment tower. The boy is disturbed by the many empty apartments, the open doors, he is afraid to leave their apartment. His father, a policeman has no time for this type of behaviour and exhorts his son to act like a man. The boy slams shut all the open doors of the abandoned flats, yelling at the apartments. He is then befriended by the daughter of the doctor, and they go off to play. The story then shifts focus to the father, who returns home from work and cannot find his son. He visits the doctor and his wife to ask them if they have seen his son, as he knew their daughter was a friend, but the doctor claims no knowledge of either, and is evasive. His suspicions raised, the father sneaks into the doctors apartment and finds out an awful secret, only to be surprised by the doctor and taken prisoner. We are then drawn into the story of the Doctor and his wife, as seen by the imprisoned policeman. Their story is engaging, and quickly becomes the centre point of the plot, with the policeman a horrified onlooker at the madness of the doctor. The humour and general strangeness of this latter story is an interesting combination, the urine bottle scene is fantastic. Watching "Going Home" was an interesting experience, it almost really had two distinct halves to it which were linked only by the fact the characters were the same. The first story is a conventional The Shining (1980) style situation, a young boy seeing visions of people that may not be there, in a large, empty environment. Then what is in effect a totally new story begins that almost totally ignores the initial story starts. The two stories are linked back together at the end, but it still seems forced. Despite this odd dichotomy the film was rather enjoyable, although my preference would have been to lose the last five minutes that validated the doctors madness, since it wasn't really necessary.
Video
Presented in 1.78:1, this anamorphic transfer varies from film to film, but the overall quality is much better than the first installment released by Tartan. For the most part the image is sharp, although there is some film grain evident in many shots and blacks aren't exactly bold. Colours are well balanced and I saw no evidence of bleeding as well as little by way of compression noise. No edge-enhancement was detected and overall this is a good transfer.
Audio
As usual Tartan have included three audio tracks for this film, considering there are several spoken languages in these films the tracks are presented in Cantonese/English/Mandarin/Korean/Thai DTS 5.1 as well as in Dolby Digital 5.1 and finally a 2.0 Stereo track. For the purposes of this review I chose to view the film with its DTS track and it's quite a solid track, presenting these films with depth and range. The dialogue is nice and clear, with ambient surounds present and well mixed throughout the sound space, as was music and other directional effects. Overall this is a very good track that suits these horror films quite well. Optional subtitles are included in English only and appear to have no spelling or grammatical errors.
Extras
Tartan has included a the film's theatrical trailer plus a collection of bonus trailers for this release. Below is a closer look at these supplements. First up is the film's original theatrical trailer which runs for 3 minutes 16 seconds. Rounding out the extras are a series of bonus trailers that include: - "Infection" which runs for 1 minute 26 seconds. - "Premonition" which runs for 1 minute 28 seconds. - "Reincarnation" which runs for 1 minute 17 seconds. - "Three...Extremes" which runs for 1 minute 38 seconds. - "A Bittersweet Life" which runs for 2 minutes 4 seconds. - "Lady Vengeance" which runs for 1 minute 46 seconds.
Overall
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