Rating: D
Dir: James Lee
Star: Emily Lim, Mei Fen Lim, Adery Chin, Kym Tan
I’d call this “slow-paced,” except that would imply it has any pace at all. If you want to watch people walking slowly around corridors, staring at cloth-covered objects or repeatedly making poor decision, this would be the film for you. Let the record show that, two minutes and twenty-seven seconds in, Chris turned to me and said, in regard to the main character, “She’s dead and doesn’t know it, isn’t she?” She was not correct in this assertion; yet I can’t say she was entirely wrong, either. It’s the kind of film that, from the very beginning, strongly suggests things are not as they seem. It’s an approach which can work, if the film gives you enough to keep the viewer interested, as in Disquiet. This doesn’t, and as a consequence, you’re left waiting for the revelation regarding how thing actually are.
As the title suggests, it’s the story of two sisters. Mei Xi (Emily Lim) is a successful author, whose books have a recurring theme of multiple personality disorder, which might as well be a flashing neon sign. Her younger sister, Yue (Mei Fen Lim), has spent years in psychiatric institutions as a result of some ill-defined trauma in her youth, possibly involving the death of their mother, but is now deemed well enough to re-enter society, in the care of Xi. Given these circumstances, what’s the dumbest thing to do? If you guessed, “Move back with your recently-mad sibling, into the empty family home which was the source of the trauma that broke her, and still has the locked room they were forbidden to enter as children,” give yourself two points.
Because that’s exactly what Xi does, and it goes about as well as you probably would expect. In such a circumstance, I’d fling open the curtains, rip the sheets off the furniture, take down the spooky funeral portrait, and let the sunlight exorcise the personal demons apparently occupying every corner of this mansion. Not the Mei siblings. They’re not living in the house; they’re barely inhabiting it, going by the lack of lighting. Maybe that would interfere with the creeping around mentioned above, interrupted occasionally by fractionally creepy events, like a pair of shoes appearing (top), or Yue enthusiastically chopping up chicken. Yeah, I wasn’t exactly shaking in my boots.
It’s difficult to discuss the ending in detail without spoilers, yet I will give you this warning. Even when the expected revelation shows up, it feels like something of a cheat. That’s because almost nothing which took place up to that point should be wholeheartedly believed, and it radically alters the film’s entire perspective. Again, this is something which is possible to pull off. Here though, it seems more like the film has been gaslighting the viewer about the reality it depicted. To be fair, from about an hour in, the signs are all more or less pointing in the same direction. By that point, however, it had already worn out its welcome, and largely lost my attention.