final_flash

Starts off really promising and then farts at the end

I watched this back when it was first on TVB but I didn't write anything about it as I was not on kisskh at the time. But recently a suggested YouTube video played the intro music to this drama and it brought back so many memories, so I thought why not talk about it.

This drama started off really well and it felt special, like a break from the typical TVB nonsense as it was full of cool CGI and style. The Chinese title of the drama was very simple. just one word and it was designed in a very clever way along with some really cool style choices. And there were cool scene transition b-roll where it is a close up of Kevin Cheng and it panned a little around him, just like on the title screen with Raiden in Metal Gear Revengeance. I was excited to find out more about what was going on with the drama as the story initially felt really compelling and the whole thing was dripping with style, but holy crap, it fell hard on its face as the drama continued.

So the show is about vampires. Yes, vampires. Nothing wrong with that as long as they do it properly. And at first it felt like it was all mystical and cool, but we eventually discover that everything - and I mean everything - is purely scientific. That destroyed all the mystical aspects of the drama and immediately made it crap. Imagine if Journey to the West had Sun Wukong doing magical stuff because he was a deity, and then halfway through we discovered he was actually an android. How many WTFs would you throw at the drama? For a more real-world example, do you remember the awesome movie Highlander? There can only be one! It was all magical and mystical and it never deviated from that fact in the storytelling. And then, Highlander 2 came out and it goes "oh you thought it was mystical? No! All science and different planet stuff." That p***ed off a lot of people, and this was what happened to this drama for me.

So, to explain my disappointment I'll explain the story how I remember it. In the future, humanity is all messed up and near extinction because of a vampire virus. Yes, a vampire virus, so it was taking a page right out of the Underworld IP. Two uninfected humans from the future - yes I said the future - played by Joel Chan and Kay Tse decided to take a sample of the virus and travel back in time to retrieve an extinct holy water that could cure the virus. How do they know this could cure the virus? Dunno, it was simply brought up without much explanation from a terribly voiced computer AI. While they were flying to the past in their time machine, they encountered problems that led to crashing, leaking of virus, Joel Chan and Kay Tse getting infected, and then the both of them emerging 500 years in ancient China where they went crazy and started biting everyone.

While these new vampires were going nuts and biting everybody and making new vampires, Kevin Cheng and his band of Imperial Guards from ancient China - yes Imperial Guards who were supposed to be guarding the Forbidden City but were now outside - were on a mission to defeat the vampires who were terrorising the town. They obviously lose because they were only human, but then suddenly all the guards - including Eddie Kwan - get struck by lightning and become immortals with superpowers. Yes, immortal just like immortals in Highlander so they can only die by being beheaded. Now we have human immortals and vampire immortals, both with super powers running around unchecked. The immortals continue their mission to hunt down vampires to the modern day with the belief that they would become human again when all vampires are destroyed.

Since this was a TVB production, you bet your ass that the characters all decide to set up base in Hong Kong because you know... Hong Kong is a great place to be when you are immortal and stuff. I didn't really mind this too much. There were some great effects and fight scenes, some great - if predictable - conflicting drama when Eddie Kwan, as an immortal, decided to make his son into a vampire so that he wouldn't die, but it is all overshadowed by the darn annoying reveal that vampirism was a virus and there was time travel involved. They didn't just jump the shark, they skipped over the blue whale as well.

Besides my main complaint, there were other issues. The main cast loved going to Amsterdam for some reason, and the story makes everything - and I mean everything - happen in Amsterdam. Where was that super magic holy cure water? Yes, it is in Amsterdam. This was purely because TVB had a tight budget so they had to choose one country and then write the entire story based in that country to save money. This meant that vampires also came from there, which made me laugh because weren't vampires historically from Transylvania, Romania? Not here, everything is in Amsterdam, yo. Every time there was a scene where they had to return to Amsterdam I shook my head like why Amsterdam? I bet they only went there for the redlight district and to smoke weed at the cafes while they tried to write themselves out of the plotholes.

Speaking of plotholes, the biggest one was how the immortals came to be after getting struck by lightning. I thought maybe some higher being gifted them that power to fight the vampires, but the drama never gives us a true explanation. We are given a half-assed explanation that some things cannot be explained by science. Wtf, the drama used science to explain vampirism but the immortals we have nothing?

The vampire acting in this drama was also so over-the-top it was hilariously bad. When Joel Chan and Kay Tse use their vampire modes they get this really stupid growling voice and they do the old-school Hong Kong movie ghost claw hand pose that kept making me laugh when I saw it. It was so bad, man, you have no idea. Joel Chan being the big bad was not a problem for me because he had the acting chops to pull it off, but damn the effects and poses they decided to use here were so bad that it removed everything intimidating about the vampire forms. Even the vampires in Buffy the Vampire Slayer are scarier, and that's not saying much.

And man, I found Grace Chan so annoying as well. She spends the entire drama just hopelessly in love with Kevin but Kevin turns her down because he is an immortal. When she discovered this, she chose to become a vampire so that he didn't have to worry about her dying, completely ignoring the fact he wasn't into her to begin with. The best part about this is that in real-life she succeeds in getting with Kevin and they got married and had kids, so she sorta succeeded I guess?

Finally we have Kay Tse as the female lead and boy she sucked. She has no, and I mean NO charisma at all. I had more fun watching Anjaylia Chan being an awesome martial artist learning under Kevin but hiding her skills, but later she becomes a vampire. Kay Tse's acting is so wooden and I really did not like watching her, and she has no chemistry with Kevin at all. I have seen more chemistry between Kevin and Chun Wong (the fat guy in the drama) than between her and Kevin.

On the bright side, it does have a great intro song.

Ultimately, a real letdown of a drama. Kevin Cheng did have a topless scene showing off how buff he was despite his age of 47 at the time, but that doesn't make up for all the awfulness of this drama. This was just disappointing and it was made worse by having a great start and then doing a stupid science twist later that just ruined the entire mystical mood it started off with.

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Boring. How is a Moses Chan drama boring?

I won’t write too much as many have already spoken about this but I can tell you now this drama was so boring. Predictable and boring. And when it tries to get interesting, it made no sense like what? My goodness, I like Shaun Tam and the tone of his voice can be ASMR soothing but he was just annoying af here. Moses is also portrayed as some sort of single minded businessman with a lot of ambition, but was too forgiving for his own good. He also got annoying to watch. Best actor was Katy Kung, but that’s not saying much I mean she was surrounded by mediocrity.

But the biggest sin of the drama? They took a classic musical piece Vivaldi’a Four Seasons: Winter - particularly the Allegro non molto movement - and put lyrics in it! Why? Why do that? The lyrics were terrible and I swear the timing was a little off as well! They could have left the lyrics out and it would have been fine but no, now all I hear when I listen to Winter is 續… 好… 戲! Damn it TVB! You ruined a classic!

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Great drama, terrible main theme song

I love this drama, always puts a smile on my face.
It’s a shame Linda Chung cannot sing.
It has a fantastic cast and great story that is just fun and gripping from beginning to end.
But Linda Chung really cannot sing.
Bobby Au Yeung is fantastic to watch and Joey Meng is darn beautiful in her role, it just blows my mind.
And yet Linda Chung just really cannot sing at all.
Overall a great drama to watch and great to rewatch, just remember to skip the intro and ending credits because the singing is terrible.
Did I mention Linda Chung cannot sing?
Seriously, who thought she could sing and allowed her to sing so many songs at TVB? She has this low hoarse voice that makes songs sound like they are being wrung out of her throat instead of being sung, and yet somebody at TVB thought “yes, she can sing, make her sing!”
Other than that small black mark, great show! Just stop Linda singing, for the love of God.

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Hilarious! So much fun to watch!

Oh boy, the crew are back and already it has been great! I am 5 episodes in so far but I am already hooked. The first episode wastes no time in getting you acquainted with the main set up and the main characters, allowing you to watch them all get up to ridiculous activities and saying truly hilarious nonsense that it was masterful. The puns and really hokey olden day equivalent of modern day conveniences is always great to see and hear! This season has removed the whole Prince angle, and instead has Kalok Chow and JW become cops and immediately forced to go undercover by Raymond Cho. It all happens so quickly in episode 1 but I somehow found the pacing easy to follow.

The show so far is missing Hugo Ng and Jonathan Cheung, and from all the promo events I have watched, there is a good chance they won’t be appearing later either. This is a shame as I loved Jonathan in the first season being this really stupid moron who often spouts stupid stuff out of his mouth, such as the classic 衫長褲短. Instead, it seems Jonathan has been replaced by Hugo Wong.

Hugo Wong was a great surprise for me as I wasn’t expecting much from his performance, but he was hilarious to watch as this really dumb and clumsy Captain Jack Sparrow wannabe villain. The first episode with him fumbling an explosive because it was too hot convinced me that he was a good step-in for Jonathan this season.

I can’t wait to see what the other episodes bring. Bring it on!

Completed:

I have watched the entire drama and I can say this is a masterclass of M. Night Shyamalan plot twists. Man there are so many twists and turns that it had me going wtf? But the humor is still there and it is hilarious, but the weirdness did get on my nerves a bit near the end.

There are two major plot devices driving everything in the drama: the love forgetting wine that causes anyone to drink it to to forget their love and it’s extra amnesiac effects are random per person, and the forget-me-not medicine, which we find out later is created from specific bird droppings. Yes, a medicine that comes out of a bird’s anus. This medicine has heal all sorts of maladies, including the amnesiac powers of the love forgetting wine. Everything that happens is a result of those two things, and the ending was extra stupid because of this as well.

Hugo Wong had a really epic ending as he made the ultimate sacrifice at the end, but even though it was supposed to be a serious scene, he managed to make me laugh by saying to his daughter “remember to stop losing weight!” As his last words to her. He had such a tragic back story as well that I wanted him to survive. Watch the drama to see what I mean.

The most annoying character is by far the one played by Helen Ma. She was annoying from beginning to end as this really angry old woman looking for daughter, and even in a flashback we see in her youth she was still a hateful bitch. She just rubbed me the wrong way in this drama, so props to Helen Ma for pulling it off.

I won’t spoil the plot twists because it is part of the fun and you should watch it to know more the first season is by far better than this one, but this season was still fun to watch and hilariously funny at times. Worth watching!

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Wasted potential

I am up to episode 20 right now and I think it is enough to get some thoughts in before this drama wraps up for the New Year. This drama started off pretty well, setting up Carlos Chan as a Criminal Psychologist who had grown up with the extraordinary power of seeing briefly into the future to see when bad things happen. I thought it was going to be a drama where he gets mental flashes of danger like in the series Angel where Doyle/Cordelia gets these head splitting flashes of people who needed help. But nope, it is a very tame TVB affair.

I really like Carlos’ acting here because he really feels genuinely nice and easygoing. I think it is how he naturally is, so he melded into this role very well. I remember watching him act like a crazed terrorist in the film Detective VS. Sleuths and it didn’t suit him. It felt too forced. He definitely suits the handsome nice guy role, and I lapped it up.

The love interest is Hera Chan who plays a cop. I actually quite like her here as she is passionate about her job and getting real justice for victims. She is surrounded by red tape and people who ignore her insights because of how young she is. It is quite annoying watching experience cops pin blame on someone based on nothing but “intuition” or “instinct” when clearly there was not enough evidence and Hera pointing this out often.

And we get the big bad of the drama played by Nicholas Yuen. He works at a mortuary as a coroner and has a really sad back story. He is the most complex character in the series and I feel that Nick really delivered here in the role as someone who does questionable things and yet you sympathise with the guy. That is something really rare to see on TVB.

So the story is that Carlos grew up with this power to see briefly into the future and see bad things happen. He dad wanted him to become a lawyer but he refused and became a Criminal Psychologist. We later see him meet with Hera and Nick, and there is a rocky start and but suddenly they are best buds hanging around with each other. We even get scenes where Carlos’ mom thinks Nick and Carlos were a gay couple, it was quite funny. But these funny scenes are very few and far between the other stuff that happens in the drama.

We slowly find out how unhinged Nick is as he suffers from severe bipolar disorder and has some huge mental issues. This was because his father, who was a married man, slept with a prostitute and that prostitute gave birth to Nick. His father’s wife found out, so the wife paid a gigolo to seduce Nick’s mom so she would leave Nick’s father alone. This led to Nick getting disowned by the mom and ending up at an orphanage, and later a mental hospital because - understandably - this trauma as a kid really messed him up. So, in the modern day whenever he encounters people he deems as terrible mothers or bad husbands, he would end up killing them and then secretly sneering. Holy crap! We also find Nick is a compulsive liar, telling the truth and twisting some facts so that it seemed he was not at fault.

The drama also tried to have things extra spicy by making Nick’s father as the same man as Hera’s, so Nick and Hera are half-siblings. Hera accepted he was her older brother but things get crazy when her mother and father find out who he is.

Meanwhile, Carlos keeps getting future messages, phone calls and video calls from the future on his phone from a woman called Mary, who - coincidentally - looks exactly like Hera. She keeps telling him a crazy serial killer is out there and the cops are after her and also he shouldn’t start a relationship with her because he goes missing. And that’s it. Huh?

Man, Carlos’ future vision powers are so wasted in this drama. They introduce it right at the beginning when he was a small kid, but it only happens like 3 times in the entire drama and Carlos is unable to do anything about the visions. I mean if he recognises the place he would rush there, but so far 100% of the time he has seen something, 100% of the time it will happen and he is unable to stop it. Why even give him these powers when he cannot do anything about it? This is like giving a candy bar to a severely diabetic person, what were the producers thinking?

And the Mary - future Hera - thing has not been explained yet. We get flashes to the future of Hera being hunted by the cops while trying to find out where the missing Carlos is and where the serial murderer was, but it was poorly written into the drama. We only know it is a flash forward future scene when the screen makes it look like you are high off drugs and you see Hera wearing a black hat. All the future scenes go nowhere, we just see Hera getting chased by cops and people shouting at her but we ultimately go nowhere. Why introduce this? You could have left out the stupid unexplained future contact with Carlos and just made those future scenes as the final few episodes of the drama where Hera solves everything. We already know Carlos future vision changes nothing, this would have made it more streamlined and not all convoluted.

John Chan plays Hera and Nick’s father and boy his acting was something else. It was as expected as in other dramas, but the scenes when he is in despair and showing his regret over being a terrible father to Nick were so over-acted. He just hammed it up to 11, crying out like a sad old martial artist in a Jin Yong Chinese martial arts drama. The only thing missing was him screaming 天啊 and teaching Nick 獨孤九劍. What I fund weird was how such a weak-will guy ended up having a child with another woman especially since he is so afraid of his wife. Man, he is so under her thumb that the thumbprint is visible from space.

Mimi Kung plays the mother to Hera and man, her character in this drama I am not sure how to feel about. This is because I understand her feelings as a woman who has a husband who had cheated on her and had a child with another woman, but at the same time the decision to hire a gigolo to seduce the other woman and then dump her was simply disgusting. This led to Nick’s awful experience where he was abandoned by both parents and becoming mentally deranged. And yet despite finding out about all this, she felt no guilt and doubles down. We’ll see if she redeems herself later, but so far I really am not sure what to think.

And then we have Zoie Tam as Hera’s superior. She plays a tough and strict cop who butts head with Hera often at the beginning, but later they come to an understanding and mellow out. I actually quite like her character as it was acted out very well, adding complexity as we see her tough side and her vulnerable side when we find out how bad her relationship with her husband was, and later how she blamed herself for how bad things got after he was murdered. She was very convincing in her role, but there is one problem, though. Have you seen her in other dramas like The Learning Curve of a Warlord or The Exorcist’s Meter 2? She was pretty in those dramas, but here oh my goodness… who was the make up artist because they did her dirty. They made her look like Michael Jackson. It doesn’t matter if you’re black or white, just make sure it’a not white like Michael Jackson!

For now this drama is just average because so many flaws hold it back. The final few episodes might turn this all around so who knows, but let’s wait and see.

Up to episode 23: okay what just happened? Man, it turned out I was wrong and Nicholas Yuen (Duncan) was not the big bad but an obvious red herring planted by TVB to misdirect us. The big bad was actually the Director of the mental hospital. I really did not see that coming, but it explains a lot. The victims of the deaths were all connected as they were or knew someone who was a patient at the mental hospital. Since Carlos was getting too close to working out who it was, the Director purposely moved all suspicion to Nicholas. Nobody would believe Nick was innocent, it even had me convinced it was him, until Nick concocted a plan to expose the real culprit. It was quite clever and it ended in a final confrontation against them at a BBQ place in the middle of the night. In a smart move, Nick put up a small hidden camera to record the whole thing as the Director busted into his monologue of why and how he killed his victims.

In their struggle, Nick was stabbed multiple times and was heavily bleeding out, leaving the Director to pour gasoline everywhere to burn everything down and pretend that Nick had committed suicide out of guilt. Unfortunately for the Director, he slipped on some gasoline on the floor and fell over, hitting his head and passing out. Nick grabbed the hidden camera and crawled out of the BBQ building, just as Carlos and Hera conveniently arrived to call him an ambulance. The Director “seemingly” died in the fire, with a charred corpse found later in the building.

Sadly, Nicholas doesn’t make it and died in hospital, but was at least able to clear his name and prove his innocence. Damn, the acting here was phenomenal and I felt so bad for Nicholas when this all came to light. Nicholas actually said in his next life he would want to be the son of his father again, but I say no way dude. Your dad was a nice guy but he was also the worst father in the world.

One thing did ruin the aftermath of his death for me. In one scene near the end of episode 22, there was a flashback to when Carlos was giving a lecture on how to control your emotional state by cupping a fist inside the other hand and breathing slowly for a few minutes to get the emotion pass. Nicholas was in this lecture and used it to control his outbursts when he could, but projected onto the wall was a slide with the title “Emotininol Control”. That clearly meant to saying “Emotional” as in “Emotional Damage”. How quick would it have been to edit that and fix the typo? The moment I saw it, it ruined the scene for me, kinda like getting ready to make love but the other person had really smelly feet. It kinda ruins the mood.

After some sad scenes, I realised that there were still 3 episodes left and that the future Hera/Mary storyline was not explained. So what did we just sit through then? And the moment I thought that, a new killer was introduced who liked to pick up girls in a taxi and then kill them with hammers. Suddenly, at the end of episode 23, there is a sudden weather change with rain and lightning so Carlos and Hera take shelter at a bus shelter, and suddenly he receives a video call and he can see future Hera/Mary getting attacked by this new killer. I have a sneaking suspicion the new killer is really the Director who managed to escape and replace his body with someone else's. This is the TVB thing to do. I don’t know how they are going to top the tragic death of “Duncan” but I have a feeling the drama already peaked.

Completed watching: what the heck. This drama really peaked with Nicholas. After he died the rest of the drama turned into a huge wtf fest.

So I was right, the Director didn’t die. Instead the body that died was his future self. Pardon? Apparently in the future he was chased by cops and he jumped off a patio where he used to live and fell, but instead of dying he travelled back in time!! What the actual f? How? Why? In any case the Director meets his past self and tells him about the future and how to commit murders while he took on a fake identity. That evening when Nicholas confronted him, the future Director went to visit and they got into an argument. Yes, the Director argued with himself, and so present Director decided to murder future Director and use future Director’s body to pretend he had died. Meanwhile, the Director’s father, who coincidentally was the Midnight Murderer, also fell down the same patio in 2005 and ended up 20 years in the future where our present is. From here it goes crazy and the Director’s father wants to kill Hera, but instead gets killed by his present day son. Carlos gets a sudden flash of the future so knew where to find Hera so tries to save her but gets stabbed to death by the Director. Hera managed to finish off the Director with a broken bottle that Carlos conveniently broke and placed on the floor for her. At the end of the drama, her desperation in seeing Carlos again made her jump off that patio and travel to the past to meet younger Carlos and give him a hug.

The time travel nonsense made no gosh darn sense. Apparently all you had to do was go to this old apartment and then jump off a patio and then as you hit the ground you would somehow be safe and would end up somewhere else in time. Why? Never explained. It was such a lazy and stupid plot device because it made no sense! And Carlos’ future vision powers are also never explained. Not only were they never explained, but they were never useful until right at the end, and even then they could not save Carlos. It was as useful as the power to breathe underwater but being afraid of water.

And man, the Director’s father is only seen in the last episode and he instantly - despite being from 2005 - was able to use Hera’s smartphone to access the internet and find out about the future within a few hours. So you’re telling me he managed to unlock Hera’s smartphone and then know how to browse the internet on the phone when he was only familiar with 2005 tech? Man, back then we barely had 2G on our candybar phones back then! Such nonsense!

And Hera, my goodness she was so stupid like doing all the wrong things. Her stupidity led to all the crap happening at the end of the drama, like absconding after being arrested and getting Carlos killed because she was captured. And her plan at the end to jump off the patio to travel back in time was so premature! She should have gotten the Mark-6 lottery numbers and took them with her as she went back so she can rebuild her relationship with Carlos again AND be rich. What a wasted opportunity! And the time travel into the past was not guaranteed! The Director’s father travelled to the future, so the time travel rules are not explained and were unclear. Why did he travel to the future but the Director travel to the past? Why?

This drama was so dumb. TVB cannot do sci-fi to save its life. Look, TVB, my dude, stop with the sci-fi nonsense until you get a good writer to pen a good script for you. Stick to mystical until then. This is why The Exorcist’s Meter and it’s sequel were awesome.

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Best TVB ICAC drama yet, but that's not saying much

Every year, TVB does a short ICAC series to discourage people from doing any dirty money laundering. I understand the need for this, but at the same time almost every year the short ICAC series have been awful. Do you remember the last few years of these? Nope. Because they all sucked.

However, this year there has been a sudden jump in quality. The actors are more compelling to watch and we actually do care a little bit for the characters we're watching, like Kelly Cheung being pregnant but also head of the ICAC department. The first episode even threw in Kent Cheng, who was great to watch being this greedy villain. He sold it really well and I thought the entire 5 episodes would be ICAC trying to nail him and him avoiding all ICAC assaults until the very last episode. When Joel Chan secretly confronted Kent and Kent got suspicious, that scene got tense. It made for some great drama right at the start.

But sadly, it fell apart so soon. Instead of a 5 episode cat and mouse game with Kent and the ICAC department, it did the classic monster-of-the-week sort of deal where each episode was it's own case, and the cases all ended without a satisfying conclusion, instead slapping onscreen text explaining what happened next. The classic rule for good story telling is SHOW, NOT TELL! When the ICAC made a move to arrest Kent Cheng at the end of the 1st episode, it doesn't show us what happened and just cuts to the text. Talk about giving the viewers blue balls! The other cases after episode 1 were all not as good and I have already forgotten them all.

This is not the worst part. Man, the music is still terrible. They took the classic ICAC theme music and remixed it but it still sounds awful. I think it is about time for an update TVB. Change it! And my gosh the character played by Yvette Chan was so annoying, just pure naïveté and stupidity that just got on my nerves. For all 5 episodes.

Overall, the quality is much better than previous years but there is still huge room for improvement.

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Was expecting more

I am a huge fan of the original anime, so when this was announced for Netflix I was hyped!

And then it was released.

Dammit, I wanted to like it so much but the Netflix series ruined a lot of the good stuff with the anime. I liked the actor playing Yusuke, he was likeable, but they took huge liberties with the story to squeeze as much as they could into 5 episodes. They took many of the beginning arcs and stripped them down and tried to squeeze them into 5 episodes. Why? Was it a budget thing? They completed skipped some important character development arcs such as the Genkai Tournament, the 4 Saint Beasts, and the best arc the Dark Tournament. For example, instead of Yusuke earning a place as Genkai’s student, he is just taken to her home in the mountains and starts training.

The action scenes were really good for sure, but they butchered all the great character development and stories that made Yu Yu Hakusho great to begin with.

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What happened?

Part 1 had its problems and was not bad as it had a real gripping ending, but part 2… what were the writers thinking?

I don't know how important CSAT exams are, but this exam is one of the driving plot points of part 2. What makes no sense is that humanity faces extinction and yet all these kid could think about was getting into college. I am sure there are more important things to worry about than college entry at a time like that. This becomes such a central plot point that one of the characters literally goes insane after finding out the 2023 CSAT exams were cancelled and were to be held in 2024. This leads to the drama ending not to a final showdown against the alien threat, but the final boss being this kid who has gone insane and had somehow activated god-mode in his final rampage.

The ending was anti-climatic and skips ahead to 2024 where humanity has wiped out 99% of the menace so had the threat under control. Okay... so we are supposed to imagine the final desperate struggle and not be shown it? Instead we were given teenaged angst drama with automatic rifles? Sure.

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What a pile of crap

The only redeeming feature of this movie is Philip Keung in the third story, but even then the story is really weak and the only scary thing was the terrible script Philip was given to work with. He did his best but it was as immersive as a dirty toilet bowl.

The first story involved two friends, one who wanted to be a screenwriter and one who wanted to be a director. They go to a special props shed with many preserved animals, where the scriptwriter writes this amazing serial murder script and wants to be the director of the movie. The aspiring director gets upset at this and claims the screenwriter was being selfish, there is a scuffle, and the screenwriter predictably dies. Aspiring director guy panics and, predictably, he put the screenwriter’s body into a suitcase and pours formaldehyde all over him to preserve the body. The director guy later is able to make the movie using his friends script but then oh no, the cops ask him questions about his missing screenwriter buddy. He claims he hasn’t seen his friend in months and realises the cops are gonna find the location where he killed his friend so decides to go back to burn the place down. This is when - somehow - he discovers his screenwriter buddy had murdered 3 people in different ways as inspiration for his script and had the bodies hidden around the prop shed, which he somehow also discovers. Plot twist, the screenwriter wanted to be the director because he knew it would be the first and last film he would make as he would be arrested soon after it. Oh no, I don’t care.

The story was boring and the deaths were all so crap and had no stakes at all so I didn’t care what happened to anybody. I didn’t even care about the two male leads because they were so unlikeable as well. My biggest issue with this story is that a few months have passed already since all the murders, but when the director guy finds the bodies they are all still fresh and not rotting at all. Do you think corpses stay fresh for months and not rot when stored in the Hong Kong heat? I don’t care how much cling film you use and formaldehyde you use, no body can look that fresh for that long. Also, won’t some dude who doesn’t work as an undertaker be refused purchasing of large quantities of formaldehyde? I am sure you need a lot for 4 cadavers. And also that suitcase where the screenwriter was thrown into must have been made using some legendary material because it was clearly a cloth-like material suitcase and yet none of the formaldehyde leaked out, not even through the zipper gaps. They should have gotten a suitcase sponsorship to promote how great the waterproofing was inside and outside.

The 2nd movie was a slightly better story about 2 girls as aspiring screenwriters (see a trend here?) and the younger girl copying some of the ideas of the older girl to write a great screenplay. The older girl was slightly upset about it, but ultimately let it go. Suddenly, out of nowhere, the younger girl goes missing and the older girl starts seeing the younger girl and thinks she’s a ghost. Oh no! We find out later the younger girl got into a taxi and the taxi driver murdered her because… I dunno. The older girl was hypnotised to try and bring back any useful information about what could have happened to the younger girl. The taxi guy just so happened to work at the same studio as the older girl so he tried to silence her. Suddenly, as the older girl was riding in his taxi and realised the taxi man was likely the murderer, the cops arrive and arrest him. Older girl’s colleague appears and says “yeah I totally suspected him so I called the cops.”

My biggest issue with the 2nd story is that we do not get given any context into why the taxi driver killed the younger girl. We do not truly understand his motivation, the story just goes “oh she died he killed her” and that’s it. We get one scene where taxi man talks to his wife and his wife shouts at him for a variety of things, as if it was trying to imply he was looking for a way to release his pent up anger but it wasn’t enough and I wasn’t convinced. And the “ghost” situations were all in the older girls mind as a result of hypnotism. That was lame.

The third story is the best of the bunch but that’s not saying much, that’s like saying the diahrrea I did today was better than the diahrrea I did yesterday. This is the story that has Philip Keung, who wakes up on a wet floor with temporary amnesia. As he runs around this warehouse he keeps seeing ghostly figures appearing and disappearing around him. Eventually he meets a woman and starts talking to her as if he was very familiar with her but she won’t follow him as he is trying to make her leave with him due to the ghosts that were there. She eventually goes with him and in a room where he saw a ghost there was no ghost there, so she tries to leave and kicks Philip in the balls using a very fake and terribly unconvincing manner. Later we discover Philip was a triad boss and his wife wanted to leave him, so he killed his wife and poured acid all over her body so she wouldn’t leave him, and then be became a vagrant out of guilt. Later some guys drugged him and his friend and took them to a warehouse to conduct illegal experiments as a way to cure this disfigured and ill woman at the behest of some guy. Philip woke up and killed a lot of the people at the warehouse out of anger and passed out due to being injected with something during one of the scuffles. All the ghost stuff and the woman he was talking to were all in his head as he was recovering from the injection. He catches up to the disfigured woman and is about to lill her when all of a sudden someone smacks him at the back of the head and kills him and the story ends.

Story 3 was a confusing mess and what illegal experiments were being conducted to fix what ailment of the woman? Nothing is explained. The story started off pretty good as Philip was dealing with possible supernatural stuff, but it immediately fell in quality the moment the woman - as his hallucinated wife - kicked him between the legs. It was poorly edited and looked incredibly fake that it took me out of the immersion immediately and the rest of the story just fell apart.

Avoid this mess of a movie.

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The CGI is pretty good but this drama is so full of things that annoyed me.

It started off pretty well and gave us enough exposition to explain the current situation, but suddenly stuff goes sideways and we see how inept and pathetic the Republic of Korea Armed Forces were. They are so undermanned that they had to rope in 3rd year High School students to help fill in the numbers.

Now these kids.... they make some really stupid decisions that had me asking if any group of rational people would make the same decisions they did. And some scenes made no sense, like in one scene they were stuck in a garage and the danger was coming in through the roof but the car keys were stuck behind a cabinet. They made it very clear it would be in any moment and yet found 10 minutes to draw lots to determine who would be bait and lure it away so somebody could try to grab the keys... the same amount of time they could have easily moved the cabinet and grabbed the keys! That is just one of many idiotic moments that had me cursing at my TV.

Best moment is the huge sacrifice at the end. Really emotional and was a great way to end part 1.

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Movie is terrible

I watched this movie and found it terrible. There were some scary moment for sure, but even before we get to the scary parts there is a really confusing tripping intro to the movie where our protagonist is working out how to deal with his girlfriend's death. This was a clusterf*** of nonsense until we get to the hiking trip.

The only actor worth a s*** was David Chiang as he had some real complex backstory that actually had me routing for him, even when his ultimate decision was the massacre of the entire village and kill his daughter's rapist before having his body split into different wine urns. That was some dark stuff, but I can understand and even sympathise with why he did it. The other characters that went on the hike and got tangled up in this mess I really didn't care about, and of course they give the main protagonist the power to see ghosts. Convenient yo.

It ends with everybody dying and the the evil ghost end boss is still floating around, so basically nothing is really rectified. Terrible

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Boring…

Anyone who tells you this is a good movie was on drugs while watching it. Too much CGI, the main protagonists are unlikeable and the movies’ biggest sin? Wasting the amazing actor Kara Wai!

A warning: there will be some big spoilers here, but these will be needed to reveal some details of the movie so you can understand my issues with the movie. It mainly follows this girl played by Jessie Li who could see monsters since she was a child so her mother abandoned her at a mental hospital. I know we are meant to feel sorry for her but I really didn’t care because the actor really couldn’t carry it off. It felt like she was trying to act *gasp!* and lacked authenticity.

And then we have the male lead Shawn Yue as Meng who is a monster hunter. Everybody in the movie calls him rubbish and a second rate hunter and this is true, he really is useless. Near the end of the movie, while still being useless, he loses his left arm so he gets a new one from a side character called Uncle Ping who puts all his power into it. Even with his new arm he still sucks, and only wins his fight against a top hunter because of some dirty tricks and all the while was as graceful as a drunk horse. The final battle was poorly choreographed and there was way too much cgi and shakey cam it was almost impossible to follow.

There is this super crystal that can grant hunters immeasurable strength. Our main male lead gets this crystal and yet is unable to defeat out main big bad played by Kara Wai. Instead, the final battle is ended in 15 seconds as Jessie suddenly pulls a Yugioh and understands the heart of the cards and does one move… hold her hand out and then twist it like Aaron Kwok in his Never Ending Love MV. This defeats Kara somehow without any dramatic build up or awesome final confrontational struggle. Kara just stands and screams and boom done. Lame.

I just hate how they wasted Kara because she is a fantastic actor that just oozes charisma and malice. In this movie she just talks a bit and gets around with loads of cgi around her. It was one really lazy part for her and doesn’t allow her to show off her other acting chops. There is one scene she leans into a sculpture and basically rubs her chest over it during an exposition bit. Was that necessary?

And a massive plothole here is that that super crystal could be absorbed to power up anyone, why didn’t Kara Wai use it to power up? Instead she leaves it floating around her domain… that makes no sense. When Shawn appears in front if her near the end and she says “you have absorbed the power of the crystal?” No shit, what were you expecting to happen by leaving it there?

The best part of the movie? Paper. A character that can origami himself into any shape and is the comedy sidekick to Shawn. But again, it is CGI. The CGI is very good, but it cannot carry a movie that is poorly executed. Avoid this movie

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Boring af!

So boring! Man like wtf were the producers thinking? A young Justice Bao is all good but come on, a 10 year old kid as Zhan Zhao running around with a sword and doing dangerous stuff? No! What were they smoking?

The worst part is that it all takes place at an Inn and I could tell it would not deviate from that inn because I am 10 episodes in and they are still there investigating the same single case. I know this is a young Bao Zheng who has yet to become an official, but they make him look incompetent as he is stuck in this inn trying to unravel a murder mystery while being unable to leave due to the outside being too dangerous, all the while being protected by a 10-year-old. Geez.

It started off looking really promising but hot dang the mystery has no pulling power and I got so bored so I am going to drop it. The whole point of Justice Bao is that he solves multiple cases - one after the other - using his wit and intelligence to showcase his abilities, but this drama is clearly focused on one case and one location. This could have worked but only if it wasn’t associated to Justice Bao. Why do this?

But the worst sin of this drama? None of the female actors in it are memorable. They are all just a mush and nobody stands out at all. Wait I take that back, there is one girl Zi Fu Er who played Bai Ruan Ruan who clearly had a main role but was… sadly… ugly. They somehow managed to make a pretty girl look ugly, and that in of itself takes effort.

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Now this is more like it!

This season is so much better than the first one it is no comparison. Most of the cast from the original season are back minus Sisley Choi, but this is not a bad thing because Sisley Choi’s character in season 1 was such a hateful woman. I really disliked the character so cutting her out - although a coincidence - was actually great and made the drama much easier to watch. Putting Kalok Chow as a new character was also a great idea, watching him is always a lot of fun and it is no different here.

The show still promotes HKIA but now it adds some needed drama into the mix, like truly misbehaving passengers, landing problems, computer malfunctions due to international antivirus updates (that actually happened), it was quite entertaining. Also watching Kalok Chow as an intern being smitten by Kenneth Ma’s ex was really funny and a much needed humor injection in this otherwise quite a bland drama when the characters interact.

That’s not to say I don’t have issues with the drama. The services that the drama show to provide are still very different in real-life because at HKIA nobody is as helpful as the show makes the personnel out to be. You would be lucky if staff made so much effort to retrieve someone’s passport like the drama showed as we see the ground staff running to a shuttle bus to find a passengers’ passport. I guarantee you that would never happen. What does happen is they would call someone and hope that person is near the bus and then that other person would walk slowly onto the bus to search in slow-motion for something. This is the truth, but of course a drama promoting how great the airport is is going to make it look like the staff would run marathons for you.

My other complaint is Kenneth still missing his ex-wife. Seriously, even though Sisley is no longer part of the show, the drama gives the excuse of Sisley going to work at Dubai airport. We get scenes of him reminiscing about their time together and I was like “did you forget what happened in season 1?” When there was suddenly news about an accident at Dubai airport with a floor collapsing, I was hoping Sisley’s character was killed so Kenneth could move on but nope… suddenly Kenneth gets a silent phone call and oh ex-wife is okay. Damn!

And my other problem is that the main characters seem to always be at the airport. Like they eat there, sleep there, drink there, enjoy their free time there, go to the gym there, flirt there, we never see them leave the airport and go home or go out to a restaurant in Hong Kong. No, everyone is always at the airport as if it were this place that is both a second home and social hub for them. What? Seriously, I understand they work hard but you can’t make their entire lives revolve around that airports, it is just sad. Watching Tony Hung and Samantha Ko, who are dating now in the show, eating at the canteen and trying to make it look like some romantic moment seemed really forced.

And man… Samantha Ko’s character is my last complaint. She is a single mother in this show but she has no idea what her daughter is doing, like at all. She doesn’t know when her school has any activities or when her daughter is off school. Tony had to tell her and her reaction is always “Ha? What? Really?” What kind of mother is she? And when she made a decision to go to Shanghai as part of some temporary 1 year transfer program, she agreed to it without even considering Tony or her daughter’s feelings at all. Seriously, just “oh yeah I am going” when she discussed it with Kenneth. Wtf? When Tony found out last minute he was hurt but said they would discuss it later, and I thought Tony would rip into her because Samantha was just plain selfish. Instead, Tony did a 180 degree turn and was only upset because she didn't give him time to plan everything to help her pack and arrange to look after her daughter for her. Jesus, I know some simps but Tony here took it to another level. I lost all respect for Tony’s character here and I started developing a hatred for Samantha’s character as well. When Samantha replies, “Why are you so good?” I also wanted to ask Tony that, but with a baseball bat.

I am up to episode 7, so let’s see how this rolls when it finishes at episode 10.

Finished: there was a final huge failed tram where a tram had an electrical failure so the team had to work together to get the passengers out, but as soon as it started it was over pretty much immediately thanks to Kenneth’s leadership and quick thinking.

This season was much better than the last by a huge margin simply by removing the stupid looking into the sunset thing they did at the end of episode 1 of season 1, but everything else was a huge upgrade. Maybe season 3 will give us something even better!

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