In short: Troublesome Night 7 (2000)

Original title: 陰陽路七撞到正

A group of music video makers and a girl group – character names and who is playing them is really of no import given the total lack of characterisation here – come to a backwoods island belonging to Hongkong to “do an MTV”, as the subtitles call it. Because this is a Troublesome Nights movie, the island is haunted by Louis Koo, and the locals are weird and conservative. Very little happens.

Having made six Troublesome Nights movies during the course of two or three years, director Herman Yau apparently lost interest in further involvement in the series, leaving it in the hands of their producer Nam Yin. Nam apparently decided that directing lark is easy and took over the direction reigns for this entry in the series as well. He also decided to break with the anthology format of the earlier films and drag the idea for a single fifteen to twenty minute segment out to very (and I mean very) long ninety minutes. So expect a film with an improbable number of characters most of whom have really no function at all in the narrative apart from standing around during dialogue scenes and making everything take longer than it should. Which, what with the glacial tempo in which Nam drags out what little plot he has, I have to repeat is very long indeed.

Nam’s also clearly not much of a director, showing no interest in even the most minimal mood-building, and apparently believing some slow motion and sped up like the Flash scenes of Koo and his co-spirit do for a spooky time make. The humour, as far as I have been able to make out from a version with pretty poor subtitles, doesn’t exactly seem to be great, either, with badly-timed slapstick that makes the earlier films in the series look like Buster Keaton, and just a lot of rambling from the characters about little of interest or import.

Even though most of the earlier Troublesome Nights weren’t exactly masterpieces, they were clearly made with an eye on providing simple, straightforward entertainment, always at least trying their best with ghosts and jokes alike. Number seven, on the other hand, really feels like an attempt to be as boring as possible, providing none of the cheap thrills an audience must have hoped for, seemingly going out of its way to do as little that’s fun as possible.