A collection of conflicted souls find themselves haunted by the ills of their society in the directorial debut from Wong Hoi, Let it Ghost (猛鬼3寶). Very much in the tradition of Hong Kong horror comedy, the three-part anthology takes pot shots at everything from hypocritical, narcissistic TV stars, and chauvinistic, homophobic men, to familial displacement caused by rampant gentrification while asking questions about who is haunting who in a society which seems to be constantly eroding around the edges.
The hero of the first chapter, Lark, is a self-centred actor currently playing the lead in the hit TV show Incarcerated Detective in which he has the nonsensical catchphrase “Justice will always stand on the side of Justice”. Though playing a figure of moral authority onscreen, Lark is privately anything but and is becoming fed up with the show because it’s getting in the way of his burgeoning movie career. Wong makes some subtle digs at how the entertainment industry works with Lark kept out at a drinking party with useful people he clearly doesn’t like but has to get along with while needing to get back for night shoots. When he gets pulled over by a cop, he panics because he’s been drinking but it turns out the guy was just a fan who wants an autograph. The policeman’s failure to investigate him turns deadly when a sleepy Lark ends up running over a young woman and then pushing her body down a mountain to conceal the crime.
Lark finds himself quite literally haunted by the spectre of his guilt when he realises that the young woman he killed was the guest actress for the episode in which she was supposed to be playing a ghost. Taking method acting to extremes, she turns up anyway prompting some ironic comments from the director about representation and the Hong Kong spirit before he makes full use of her now unkillable body to get exactly the effect he wants for the scene. A late twist hints at Lark’s self-obsession and insecurity if also perhaps the mutability of stardom in which no one is ever really irreplaceable.
Like Lark, the hero of the second chapter, Kwan, is also somewhat insecure but mostly in his lowly status as a taxi driver while his materialistic girlfriend appears resentful that he can’t give her a standard of life to match that of her snotty rich girl friends. In a recurrent motif, Kwan keeps making a point that he isn’t “homophobic” but several times makes homophobic remarks and later tells a young woman that the boys love manga she’s reading “defies the Chinese values of man and wife”, while titles of books in his cab include “cute wife, obey me tonight” and “Domineering Driver and the Dainty Wife”. An attempt to impress his girlfriend with a cheap “staycation” backfires when she is possessed by a “horny ghost” whose insatiable appetites eventually become more than he can handle. The film walks a fine line between satirising Kwan’s toxic masculinity and patriarchal views and accidentally endorsing them, potentially spilling over into homophobia in the punchline of its possession gag.
In part three meanwhile, the venue is a moribund shopping mall where a young woman runs a bridal shop inherited from her mother. The half-shuttered mall already has a ghostly quality, as Fong points out no one goes to malls anymore, and it could in a sense be she and her friends that are haunting it though there is a more literal ghost of an abandoned child as a kind of symbol of the “orphans” of gentrification displaced from their homes and left with nowhere to go. Fong and her friend Edward decide to look for a nice couple to look after the ghost, Kat, who would then be reincarnated as their child but struggle with unexpected interference from a kung fu exorcist working for security who want to get rid of Kat so the building can be sold.
There is quite a lot of haunting going on, be it the grim spectres of celebrity culture, sexism, or the gradual erasure of the old society which brings about its own ghosts in the eerie sense of emptiness with which abandoned buildings are imbued. Cynical humour and a thick slice of irony lend each of these ghostly tales a satirical quality hinting at the unreality of the everyday marked by a sense of displacement and emptiness in a disappearing Hong Kong.
Let It Ghost screens at the BFI Southbank on 14th July as part of Focus Hong Kong.
Original trailer (English subtitles)
Windows on Worlds 