Diary (2006) – DVD Review

Want to see a Pang Brothers movie with a great look like The Eye or Re-Cycle with a generic story and an over-complicated twist ending? Well, then, you my friend are in luck! Diary, aka Mon seugn, is here and what a beautiful mess this thing is. As I just stated this film is gorgeous (as is almost any film from Oxide and Danny Pang), but there’s not enough meat to the story to keep many viewers interested.

Rating:

Diary is basically a story about Winnie Leung who is a very lonely woman. She spends all day by herself, making puppets and food (how she was able to afford to just sit alone at home all day was beyond me). Winnie mopes around all day after her boyfriend, Seth, left her after their break up. She spends the first 10 minutes crying about it and leaving messages on his voicemail. By this point you already hate her for being annoying, but if you stick it out you realize things may not be what they seem. When she finally meets Ray (the same guy that plays Seth), she keeps explaining how Seth is gone, but it’s different every time (think the Joker in The Dark Knight explaining how he got his scars). Throughout the film we’re treated to various escapades of her decent into insanity, and these are the scenes where the Pang Bros. really shine. By the end of the film, you’ll feel like you’ve just been slapped in the face as they manage an ending that could be called cliché as hell.

So, once again, I’m going to bring up the stunning imagery. Diary, like most of the other Pang Bros. films, is a sight to behold. It’s magnificent. They manage to make a small, dank apartment even drearier and more animated then it already was. Green hues dot the light filtering in through the windows. The rest of the color is muted and faded. You really feel the sense of depression and sadness that permeates the film. The shadows over take the actors and give hints as to what’s going on by shading certain characters more than others (you’ll realize this by the end of the film when everything starts coming together). When the special effects happen they’re pretty snazzy as well. Where some films have terrible CGI that really ruins some scenes (anything by Asylum) the Pang Bros. make it work in their favor. Taking a huge step down from Re-Cycle, Diary has minimal CGI, but it works and actually makes up most of the best scenes in the film. One such scene involves Winnie having a nervous breakdown in her kitchen and the screen begins to shake. As it does, a humanoid creature walks in the background, stomping across the screen until it begins to slowly turn towards the lonely woman. Of course, you’ll find out exactly what’s going on with this thing later on, and it’s one of the only good payoffs.

This is where the problems begin, the story being the biggest one. I know what they were trying to do, and in showing Winnie’s descent into madness, they did an excellent job visually (even pop sensation Charlene Choi did a pretty good job as the demented lead), but what happened didn’t seem to be enough to make a feature film. For an 85-minute film it almost put me to sleep as there were long sequences where nothing happened (or we were supposed to be getting subtle cues to her downward spiral, but they just played out as exposition that could have been cut). Heck, if this had been a 40-minute short it would have been excellent. As it is, it’s overlong and drawn out. Really, there’s some smaller problems, like how the twist at the end couldn’t have been more generic or forced (I had a similar problem with High Tension’s twist ending as well), and some of the editing made the film a bit more confusing (at about the hour mark you’ll think the film is over, but…nope), but for me the biggest problem was forcing the film to be 85 minutes long when there’s barely enough story for half of that. I understand we’re supposed to understand her descent into madness, but it doesn’t take 5-minute increments of her sitting at a table alone to get the point across.

I went online to read some reviews, and it seems that a lot of people love this film. That’s too bad that they’re giving this film so much praise (I sure as hell didn’t see it)  because I was very excited to check this out (especially after Re-Cycle and The Eye), but Diary fell far short of my expectations. It doesn’t deserve praise simply because it’s a Pang Bros. film.

EXTRAS

TRAILERS: Trailers for Diary, Re-Cycle and Forest of Death.