Three… Extremes

Three… Extremes was released in Asia last year, has played at film festivals around the world since then, and is surely a BitTorrent favorite. It’s getting its first legitimate North American release on select big screen by Lions Gate on Friday, October 28, 2005 and will follow on DVD in a few months.

A macabre trilogy of unrelated horror stories Three ... Extremes unites a handful of East Asia’s most acclaimed genre directors —Takashi Miike represents Japan, Fruit Chan is from Hong Kong, and Park Chan-Wook is from Korea.

First up is Dumplings, the segment directed by Fruit Chan. Mrs. Lee, an ageing actress (Miriam Yeung) desperate to retain her beauty and keep the interest of her philandering husband, seeks the rejuvenating effects of a chef’s (Bai Ling) special dumplings, only to discover they contain a horrifying ingredient. But that doesn’t stop her — her cravings increase, sending her into a netherworld of desperation.

This is actually an abbreviated version of a feature film also called Dumplings; it’s hard to tell if anything was lost in the editing, but what’s there now is a linear, creepy, and quite disgusting story (the sound effects really add to the proceedings!). Yeung is really too pretty and not old enough to be believable — no ageing makeups seem to have been used for a “before and after” pretense — but her acting is good. Ling is excellent as the malevolent, ageless she-devil with whom Mrs. Lee makes the pact.

Next is Cut, directed by Park Chan-Wook. A horror film director (Lee Byung-Hun) is held prisoner on the set of his latest film by a vengeful extra (Lim Won-Hee) and forced to make an impossible choice that will change his life forever. Cut is the most bloody and gruesome of the trio, but it’s tempered by macabre humor (some of it quite too silly, wrecking the horror aspects).

Fingers play a large role in the story — will the director use his to strangle a child, or will he sit by and watch his pianist wife’s ivory-tinklers get cut off one by one? Cut is easily the most visually beautiful, stylized segment and probably the most accessible to American audiences who might liken it to a cross between Saw and Swimming With Sharks.

Box is the concluding segment, and it’s directed by Takashi Miike whose name you might recognize from his 1999 film Audition or from his upcoming entry in the Masters of Horror series, Imprint. Box follows Kyoko (Kyoko Hasegawa), a reclusive and beautiful novelist who is guilt-ridden over the death of her twin sister (Mai Suzuki) at the age of 10. When she receives a mysterious invitation to the site of her sister’s demise, Kyoko is compelled to leave the safety of her home.

Surrealist, minimalist, and quite stunning, Miike’s style here might remind some of David Lynch or Roman Polanski. (Unfortunately, some of the scenes are also reminiscent of the egregiously over-used “Grudge” style ghost girls and the ending is perhaps a bit too bizarre.)

Three… Extremes is a must-see movie for fans of the genre, and it’s also a great introduction for anyone who’s curious about A-horror and wants to get an inkling of how each culture’s style comes across in horror.

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Reviewed by Staci Layne Wilson