The Maid (DVD)

I hate it when people forget to latch the gate. Apparently, Satan hates it too because when a young maid in Singapore unwittingly opens the gates of Hell, she finds herself in a netherworld of trouble.

The movie starts off with an optimistic voiceover from Rosa Dimaano (Alessandra De Rossi), a naïve Filipina orphan who's just arrived in Singapore from her modest country digs. She wants to see the world and is paying her way by working as a maid for Mr. and Mrs. Teo (Chen Shu Cheng, Hong Hui Fang) and their mentally-handicapped 20-something son, Ah Soon (Benny Soh).

Rosa is a terrible maid. She usually just sits around being fed eggs by Mrs. Teo, stands around watching Mr. Teo painting his murals, or wastes time playing dress-up with Ah Soon. When she finally gets around to doing some housework, she makes the horrid mistake of sweeping up some ashes that were left out as offerings for "the hungry ghosts." You see, Rosa has arrived during the lunar seventh month, Hungry Ghost Time, when the world is open to all kinds of supernatural possibilities — good, and bad. (In case you forget this, you're reminded it's the seventh month and you have to be careful of the ghosts at least nine or ten times throughout the film.)

Writer/director Kelvin Tong has some good ideas here: I like the fact that for once it's not the maid (or nanny, or cook, etc.) who is evil. She's the victim. Tong also has a great twist ending, but it takes so long to get there, with so many boo-scares and repetitiveness, that you no longer care by the time you get there. Tong seems to think that throwing in random "scary nightmare" images, arty black and white and slo-mo, plus adding a lot weird sounds, is going to frighten the viewer. What we really needed here was much more judicious editing and enticing clues to the mystery, leading up to the twist.

The acting is quite good. The main characters, particularly Rosa and Ah Soon, are very much in the moment throughout everything they do — also, the actors physically look their parts, which is half the battle.

The DVD does not contain any additional release material. It has some English captions, but only for the characters who are not speaking English. The captions should have been optional throughout, as some of the actors have very heavy accents that will be difficult for most people to decipher.

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Reviewed by Staci Layne Wilson