HORROR TRILOGY THAT MADE TWO BROTHERS FAMOUS
Twins Oxide and Danny Pang’s supernatural thriller ‘The Eye’ established their reputation as gifted directors. Two equally good sequels followed
Directors Oxide Pang Chun and Danny Pang Fat, known professionally as the Pang brothers, have had interesting careers even by the standards of Hong Kong’s perpetually fascinating film industry.
The identical twins made it big internationally with Bangkok Dangerous, a gangster film they directed together in Thailand in 1999.
This led to successful careers in Hong Kong – where they became known for directing horror films such as The Eye – and even stints in Hollywood, where, unusually, they directed an American remake of Bangkok Dangerous.
At the start of their careers, Oxide Pang worked for television production company Robert Chua Production House, while Danny Pang joined Hong Kong broadcaster TVB and then became a film editor. Oxide Pang took up an offer to work at a visual effects house in Thailand – the brothers are half-Thai – and this led to their first film as co-directors.
“The pace of filmmaking in Thailand is more conducive to creativity. There is much more time to develop your ideas,” Oxide Pang told this journalist in 2002.
The brothers did look identical. “They have the same hairstyle and the same offhand speaking manner – it would be near impossible to tell them apart if it weren’t for their clothes,” Winnie Chung wrote in the Post in 2004.
They have said they rarely disagree with each other – “Our beliefs and attitudes coincide 100 per cent,” Danny Pang told the Post in 2007. This has led to an interesting way of working – they turn up at the set on alternate days to direct.
Here we look at the brothers’ most famous work, the spooky
The Eye trilogy.
THE EYE (2002)
Horror films became a big deal in Hong Kong after the massive box office success of the Japanese horror Ring in 1999. Impressed by Bangkok
Dangerous, director Peter Chan Ho-sun asked the Pangs to direct a horror film for his Applause Pictures production company.
The Eye, which the Pangs co-wrote with Jojo Hui Yuet-chun, is a classy, tightly scripted supernatural thriller that had a more American structure than Hong Kong’s scatterbrained, but fun, horror films.
“It’s based on a real incident from the news,” Chan, the film’s producer, said in an interview at the time of release. “A woman who was born blind had her sight restored, so everyone thought her story had ended happily. But a week later, she committed suicide. This incident inspired the Pang brothers to make The Eye.”
Written by the Pangs, The Eye features Malaysian-born singer-actress Angelica Lee Sinje – wife of Oxide Pang since 2010 – as a woman who has her corneas replaced in a Thai medical tourism hospital after being blind since childhood. Back in Hong Kong, she starts to see ghosts, who harass her.
With the help of a friendly eye doctor played by Lawrence Chou Tsun-wai, she works out that the ghosts are related to the previous owner of her corneas, a bullied girl who committed suicide in Thailand. So the pair return to Thailand to try to set the dead girl’s ghost to rest.
The Eye is more of a psychological thriller than a gore fest, and the effects by Hong Kong’s Centro Digital Pictures are low-key and unnerving.
But the finale, which features the mass immolation of a whole street of unfortunate people, returns the filmmakers to their Hong Kong roots, even if it does lower the tone of the film.
“The Eye cemented the Pang brothers’ reputation in horror,” Danny Pang told the Post.
THE EYE 2 (2004)
The Pang brothers tried to do something different with The Eye 2, and have referred to it as the “sequel which is not a sequel”. The result is a taut, if gloom-laden, thriller which is elevated by a superlative performance by Shu Qi, who is on screen for pretty much the whole film.
The film’s production values are slicker than the original and the story moves solidly into J-horror territory, showing scenes of spiritual possession during childbirth that, like many Japanese horrors, push the barriers of good taste.
There is also an unpleasant focus on suicide that would probably not make the grade in today’s more enlightened times.
This time, the story revolves around disembodied ghosts who are seeking to find homes in unborn fetuses.
Shu Qi plays a depressed pregnant woman who tries to kill herself when her lover deserts her. She is rescued by emergency workers, but then starts seeing ghosts. She is hounded by a female ghost who turns out to be her lover’s wife – she killed herself when she found out about the affair.
Realising that the ghost is planning to be reborn as her child, she tries to kill herself – but the ghost will not let her die.
Our beliefs and attitudes coincide 100 per cent DANNY PANG
THE EYE 10 (2005)
The Eye 10 – the third film in the franchise – turns the series on its head, toning down the shocks for cheeky teen-oriented japery and a lot of energetic running around. The ensemble cast and the short, interconnected stories that make up the first half are reminiscent of classic Hong Kong works such as the Troublesome Night ghost franchise, which the Pangs reportedly enjoyed.
A group of young people – including Kate Yeung Kei and Isabella Leong Lok-sze – mess with black magic while in Thailand, and are then hounded by ghosts when they return to Hong Kong.
Two of their number have become trapped in the spirit world, and they return to Thailand to try to rescue them.
The “10” refers to a book of Thai superstitions which details 10 techniques to see a ghost.
In this feature series on the best of Hong Kong cinema, we examine the legacy of classic films, re-evaluate the careers of its greatest stars, and revisit some of the lesser-known aspects of the beloved industry.