In short: Possessed (1983)

Original title: 猛鬼出籠

Following an eventful time with a guy who tries to hack Hong Kong cops Siu (Siu Yuk-Lung) and Kong (Lau Siu-Ming) into pieces while his own head appears to do some rather funky transformation stuff, Siu finds himself haunted by increasingly weird occurrences. At the beginning, he appears to be possessed into bouts of violence not unlike what the man from the initial event was doing, but the supernatural force threatening him quickly begins to move into his apartment like a rather unwanted house guest, ruining Siu’s teenage sister’s (Irene Wan Pik-Ha) attempts at having sex with her boyfriend even worse than Siu’s tendency to threaten said boyfriend with physical violence does. Then there’s the very unpleasant time when an invisible force tortures and rapes Siu’s girlfriend Sue (Chan Chi-Shui).

Eventually, the possession and haunting will turn out to be not quite as random as they at first appear, pointing back to some unresolved family business. Obviously, Siu and his family will end up trying to solve it, with the help of Buddhist practitioner Auntie San (Chan Fung-Bing).

Unlike its sequel (at least in name), David Lai’s Possessed does not belong into the exalted realm of the weirder Hong Kong ghost horror movies of its era. It does contain the nearly mandatory – and really unpleasant – rape scene, but for most of the running time, the haunting is very much of the bread and butter style seen in many a Hong Kong or Taiwanese or Chinese movie. It’s not exactly boring, but it certainly has neither the heightened weirdness of the best films of its genre, nor is it quite satisfying as a more standard horror film. Lai’s direction is more solid than remarkable, as well.

Possessed does become rather more exciting – and excitable – in the climactic exorcism sequence, where everything suddenly goes as crazy and tense as you’d have hoped for the whole of the movie: assistant priests die horribly, people and things fly, grabby demon hands come out of a glowing hole in the ceiling, and a four-faced buddha shoots beams of light at the main creature, which goes up in flames, falls out of a window and explodes two cars. All of which sounds rather more like what you’d expect from a Buddhist exorcism if you’ve seen enough of these movies. The film also has a fantastic horror movie bullshit ending so pointlessly cruel and absurd, it’s hard not to love it.