Ab-Normal Beauty

(Tartan Video, 12.26.2005)

If there's one kind of film you don't want to star in, it's a snuff film. This is made painfully obvious to Jiney (pop star Race Wong), a tortured art student in the midst of a creative slump. While Jiney's work is enthusiastically received by teachers and students alike, she isn't satisfied. That all changes when she stumbles upon a gruesome car wreck and photographs a dead body as it lies bleeding in the middle of the street.

Morbidly fascinated by this tragedy, and the resulting photographs, Jiney becomes unreasonably preoccupied with death. As you might expect, this fascination disturbs her girlfriend Jas (Roseanne Wong, Race Wong's pop side-kick) and Anson (Anson Leung), a naive suitor who doesn't seem to understand that Jiney is unavailable.

Troubled by unhappy childhood memories, Jiney's dark obsession slowly gets out-of-hand. She covers Anson in blood-like red paint, dangles perilously from a balcony, and aggressively demands the slaughter of chickens, all without any discernible emotion. Eventually, she gets over this preoccupation and, right as things seem back on track, Jiney starts receiving videotapes. Snuff videotapes. Mirroring her own reality-based art, these tapes show the horrific torture of innocent, unwilling victims. And Jiney might just be next.

The Pang brothers -- best known in North America for The Eye -- are back and they're as visually inventive as we've come to expect. Directed by Oxide Pang, Ab-Normal Beauty is, first and foremost, a fascinating film about a fascinating character. Obsessive, exacting, and perverse, Jiney would much rather photograph people than get to know them.

Unlike your average, everyday, emotional human being, Jiney needs to see pain and suffering, in order to be satisfied with her work. Watch for the intense, panicked sense of discovery that crosses her face when she first decides to add blood to an otherwise ordinary nude portrait. It's a chilling moment.

As Ab-Normal Beauty unfolds, an intriguing character study mutates into a terrifying, full-fledged horror film. Oxide borrows the mysterious-tape-on-the-doorstep conceit from Lost Highway but to far more visceral and unnerving effect. And if you thought the high-concept-minded villains in Seven and Saw were mean, brace yourself for the next level in pain and torment.

Presented with impressive craft and cinematic showmanship, this should please fans of the Pangs and make them some new ones along the way. Ab-Normal Beauty is abnormally good. -- Jonathan Doyle