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Review | Tales from the Occult: Body and Soul movie review – Hong Kong slasher horror makes a comeback with entertaining, if unremarkable, trio of films
- Horror anthology series Tales from the Occult returns to take on the slasher genre with a trio of films centring on serial killers and their potential victims
- While this latest anthology is fun to watch, it is neither profound nor imaginative enough to leave an impression
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3/5 stars
Horror anthology series Tales from the Occult returns after 2022’s eclectic trio of ghost stories – this time, taking on the slasher movie genre.
All three short films in Body and Soul, each about 30 minutes long, revolve around serial killers and traumatised female protagonists looking to turn the tables on them.
Things kick off promisingly with Rapunzel by Frank Hui Hok-man (Trivisa). At the centre of this twisted tale is Mr Ho (Wong You-nam), a psychopathic hair salon owner who targets women with great hair by drugging them – and then scalping them – in his empty store.
Into this death chamber steps Maggie (Michelle Wai Sze-nga), a former teen idol who is desperate to make her acting comeback. Ho happens to catch her in a particularly feisty mood during a late-night meeting and Hui, working with a simple yet effective story, keeps the tension high until the hair-raising end.
The second segment, directed by Daniel Chan Yee-heng (We Are Legends), is more contrived than it is thrilling. Cheshire Cat follows Nora (Cecilia Choi Si-wan), a dedicated cat rescuer who has lost her own feline to a gruesome murder, as she encounters two eccentric strangers who claim to be animal lovers (Kevin Chu Kam-yin and Tony Wu Tsz-tung).
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