Re-Cycle

I really love me some horror movie, and if you throw in a long haired Asian ghost the merrier I am. So when I see this film by the famed Pang brothers, who to my knowledge have only created The Eye which turned into a touching drama and thus negated anything horrific I had just seen. Re-cycle not only failed to be frightening as it was far more similar to a Jim Henson production, it also pissed me off with its strong anti-abortion message, oh, and it made no sense either.

We meet Ting-yen, a young author who is on a total high after her third book hits the top of the book charts. However in an effort to get away from having to write a fourth book in the romance series, she chooses to write a supernatural story. Her publisher lets the cat out of the bag by announcing her up-coming horror novel before Ting-yen has even begun writing it. At this point I believe that the whole movie has moved into showing what is being written in the novel and not the reality the author is experiencing.

Ting-yen is blocked and writes drafted ideas onto paper and then discards them in the recycling bin of doom. It isn’t until she begins to experience odd sounds, shadows and long strands of hair in her home is she able to begin writing her story. Each occurrence becomes an immediate part of her story until she takes the enters the lift and is deposited into the land where all things go when they have been discarded. She sees large Ferris wheels and rocking horses and even that lost sock from the dryer turning this potential horror into a fantasy waiting for a musical number. While stumbling around she meets an old man and a young girl who offers to help her get to the exit which is apparently on the other side of the hall of aborted fetuses. Get it? All things discarded, which means her traveling companion is her aborted daughter. This is when I rolled my eyes and regretted being excited about this flick.

Gack! What a bummer. I don’t like my horror to have a moral message I personally think that is crossing the line. If I wasn’t as Pro-Choice and Anti-Baby as I am, I’m sure I would not be as repulsed by this action the Pang brothers decided to take. I was absolutely disappointed in this movie, but I’m sure that those of you who have the DVD collection of Kirk Cameron in his Left Behind series will absolutely love this movie.