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Inner Senses is a film
that feels very similar to The Sixth Sense, until the second half
takes you somewhere completely different. Cheung Yan (Karena Lam)
lives on her own, and for a good many years has been cursed with
the ability to see wandering ghosts. She has visited many doctors
and psychiatrists, but all to no avail - they think she is a nutter,
while she knows she is not. Enter Jim Law (Leslie Cheung), a renowned
psychiatrist, who loves to take on such difficult projects because
he is a non-believer in ghosts or any other spiritual entities.
Jim is convinced that Yan's problems derives from
her own childhood experiences and all her visions are actually created
in her own head. With time, he heals her from her visionary problems,
but the result is that Yan has fallen in love with him.
He tries to ignore her advances, but like Jacky
Cheung in July Rhapsody, he steadily falls into her charms. All
seems fine, until Jim's own childhood nightmare is back with a vengeance,
haunting him wherever he goes. But with Yan's help, he comes to
terms with the meaning of his visions, and embraces them with all
his heart.
You can be forgiven for making comparisons with
The Sixth Sense. There are similarities, especially in the first
half of the film, but when it enters the second half, most of the
strong points suddenly evaporates. Yan's scary visions sells this
film, and it is her that we feel empathy with. We sympathise with
her plight, but when this is taken from us, we are left with less
profound imagery. Jim's problems are scary in its own right, but
doesn't seem as strong as Yan's, and we don't fully understand why
his problems suddenly resurface, or why the ghost is now haunting
him after years of peace. Strange.
But nonetheless, Inner Senses is a strong film,
one that likens with the best of Japanese horror films, and the
plot and characters are well implemented. Karena Lam is becoming
a hot actress in Hong Kong right now, especially with her recent
performances. If she continues like this, she will do very well
indeed. Leslie Cheung provides a satisfactory performance, but during
the latter half of the film, I felt that he overdid it a bit.
Overall, Inner Senses is a well structured
film, with good emphasis on scaring the audience, and giving them
no clues as to where the film will lead to --always a good idea.
It is no classic, but a very nice horror film.
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