SYNOPSIS:
Steven (Ekin Cheng) is a student of botany who has written
his doctorate paper on the theory that plants have feelings
and language. One day, the Prime Minister's daughter is murdered
in the forest. Detective C.C. Ha (Shu Qi), is put in charge
of this case and a major suspect is arrested. However, Steven
hopes to reveal the truth behind the crime through his research.
An experiment is carried out at the crime scene, the forest,
to determine whether the suspect is guilty by obtaining evidences
from the forest itself...
MOVIE
REVIEW
If the
concept of plant life having the ability of communication
and capable of emotion doesn’t sound like an awful cheesy
ideal, read no more because this review for Forest of Death
is headed that way.
Films
have always stretched the audience’s imagination and
if it’s carried out properly, it’s not hard to
buy into whatever notion that the filmmakers are trying to
sell. For example, Dr Dolittle which was handled with humor
and audience won’t find the concept of human communication
with animals silly at all. Sixth Sense and Encounters with
the 3rd kind had carefully handled their characters and planned
their revelation which resulted in the audience emoting with
them and didn’t find communicating with ghost or aliens
too far fetch an idea to believe in.
But that
not the case here. In all seriousness, Forest of Death might
have fare much better as a comedy but obviously that wasn’t
the genre that it was attempting. As a science flicks, it
never made any serious attempts to build up a strong case
for audience to believe what the filmmakers are trying to
sell.
For
example, the Ekin Cheng’s accidental discovery that
plant life has the ability to react when threaten was immediately
followed by enlistment into a forest murder case in the next
sequence of events. Now I might not be a scientist but shouldn’t
there be more tests to the discovery made before engaging
such a major investigation? How did a plant having reaction
when being threaten translates to having the ability to become
witness to the forest murder? And of course the assumption
of plant A equals to plant B are taken way to broadly.
The most
amazing bit was that the detective (Shu Qi) investigating
the murder case believed that the forest could reveal what
actually happened during that fateful day.
CSI’s
Gil Grissom will not be please with such detective work.
It’s
not only that the film threw out all scientific plausibility
out of the window; this movie is filled with inconsequent
events leading up to nothing (such as rope flying off the
dynamic duo’s hand in the forest and no explanation
or follow up to that strange event) and it tried to add in
a unconvincing and tedious love triangle between Shu Qi, Ekin
Cheng and Rain Li that did nothing but drag the pace of the
movie even further.
Pang
Brothers’ films are often a messy misfire that it baffled
me on their ability to churn out movies after movies (and
in an amazing quick pace). Their movies are often either a
copy of other successful movies (watch The Eye) or films that
tried to tackle something new but end up nonsensical and awful
waste of time (watch Abnormal Beauty). Their latest offering,
Forest of Death belongs to the later group, the ridiculously
silly one.
If
there’s anything that worth respecting in this movie,
it would be how amazing that Ekin Cheng would be able to say
lines like “I believe that plants have emotions and
they are able to communicate” and Shu Qi declaring that
she believes that the forest could be her witness with such
a straight face. Their professionalism and conviction in their
performance often made me wonder how much they got paid for
doing this and do they actually care about the type of movies
that will eventually be included in their resume.
SPECIAL FEATURES :
This Code 3 DVD includes one trailer right before
the menu and contain the trailer for this movie.
AUDIO/VISUAL:
Strangely this Dvd doesn’t come with a Cantonese audio
which we had grown accustom to for the recent Hong Kong Dvds
released in Singapore. It comes with only one Mandarin language
track in Dolby Digital 2.0 with Chinese and English Subtitles.
MOVIE RATING:
DVD
RATING :
Review
by Richard Lim Jr
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