The Occupant

Actor Chow Yun-Fat takes one of his first dabs at horror comedies, where he plays Hong Kong Detective Valentino Chow assigned to arrest a pickpocket at the airport, where he runs into Angie (Sally Yeh), a college student from Canada. She was returning to her native Hong Kong to work on a Master's thesis focusing on the superstition and, to her surprise, rents an apartment that is haunted by the ghost of a singer. The ghost appears thereafter and possesses Angie.

There are some scary moments in this film, especially the part where the ghost suddenly appears behind Angie in her darkened bedroom. The ghost plot is mixed in with comedy, courtesy of goofball Raymond Wong, who plays womanizer Hansom Wong. He tries endlessly to make it with Angie, only ending up with rather silly results. But, his persistence did get very annoying at times (glad he got a little taste of the ghost's wrath). And, Chow and Angie make an OK pair with some romantic talk here and there and some lighthearted chemistry.

The real meat of the film is, of course, the ghost horror brought on my the deceased singer, Lisa Law (Mak Kin-Man). Her background story could have been elaborated upon more than just having a simple love-triangle story. But nonetheless, it's not a bad horror comedy. Great to see Chow Yun-Fat, Sally Yeh and Raymond Wong all collaborate in one of their earlier films.

Grade B-