Troublesome Night 5

This is the fifth film in Hong Kong's "Troublesome Night" movie series, a collection of films whose stories are based on the supernatural and creepy ghosts. This is what I think the best film of all the Troublesome Night movies.

In the first story, Taxi Driver Cheung (Simon Lui) runs into bad luck when he encounters strange customers during his night shift including a bloodied triad leader, a mysterious old woman and a paranoid girl. The filming of this story is just perfect with its creepy tension, dry humor and suspense. The Chinese title of this movie literally means "Haunted Street," and this story represents this movie title perfectly.

In the second story, Cheung's friend and colleague, Fat (Louis Koo), moves to a new home with his wife (Amanda Lee) and son to hide from loan sharks. His new home is haunted by a demon and it won't relieve Fat of troublesome nights unless he gives him a share of everything he has. This one is full of drama and has a handful of jumpy moments. Louis Koo and Amanda Lee had great chemistry together and delivered quite a good acting performance.

The third story is about Fat's son, On (John Tang), who is employed as a security officer at a business firm. The firm stands where Fat's old hideout home once was. There, he encounters the mysterious old woman, who gave him and his co-workers quite a scare. What resulted was a mayhem of thrills and spills, from running down stairs to escaping into elevators - hilarious and action-packed. Great acting, too.

Overall, it's a great movie with a haunting music score, good acting, dry humor, perfect atmosphere, lots of ghost action and hairy-raising moments.

Grade A

Creative yet chaotic horror-mystery anthology short-movies interconnected with each other. The story is vague yet funny and the atmosphere is definitely there, but with it's shortness and quick changes of characters it fails to deliver any suspense and tension. The acting is as usual in older Hongkong movies rather mediocre and often not convincing. If you are watching this movie in german, the title is: "Troublesome Night the A-Files" it is totally mysterious why they gave it this title, no information that this is the fifth installment of this anthology movie series nor any information on what "The A-Files" are supposed to be because they are never being mentioned. If you decide to buy this movie as the german DVD release, better be prepared for some traumatizing picture quality, it's as if they had ripped it from a very low resolution youtube video. The quality is so blurry and corny it's really distracting. But I bought it used for 69 cents so I'm not really complaining.