U.S. DVD Release
Ya know I really should have loved this film. It had everything a dweeb like me requires of nerdy horror/sci-fi entertainment. It had a team of scientists, a freaking cool material that traps ghosts and a crime unit lip reader assigned to decipher the ghost’s secrets of life and death. It was all here folks…and yet…I was left feeling let down. Was it the bits and pieces that were never quite made clear? Was it the deviation from the concept’s potential?
I’m not sure yet but Silk didn’t wow me. No biggie though because it certainly wasn’t a bad flick at all. I just doubt I’ll be watching it again any time soon. You win some and lose some, right?
Silk revolves around a well-funded government group, lead by Hashimoto, dedicated to discovering the secrets of anti-gravity. It’s certainly a worthy effort and they’re making interesting progress using a new material called Menger Sponge, a material created using human proteins and blah blah technobabble blah that traps energy. There’s only one small problem…Hashimoto and his team have been doing very little anti-gravity research. Instead he’s got his team investigating reported ghost sightings all over the world.
When the team hits pay dirt, they use the Menger Sponge to trap the ghost, a young boy, in a room where they set up an observation lab to monitor him. The building is quarantined under the false pretense of some infectious agent and Hashimoto, much to the displeasure of his government sponsor, requests a crime unit officer be re-assigned to his unit. Tung, an officer with the uncanny ability to read lips, isn’t at all pleased with this assignment but Hashimoto persuades Tun to reconsider and the team begins their investigation.
Being new to the research team, Tun discovers watching the child too closely can be deadly as he doesn’t like to be stared at. A thin strand, almost silk-like, connects the child to his gawking victim allowing him to connect physically and drain their life force not unlike a vampire. Unfortunately, it takes an autopsy of a research team photographer and losing a valued member of the research team for Tun truly understand the deadly force the child wields. Once Tun gets a handle on his task, the child is set free to go about its daily “life.” Tun is given a spray bottle of liquid Menger Sponge to be used as eye drops to see the child’s whereabouts and spray his bullets in case he needs to disrupt any attack the child may attempt.
The chase is on! Tun begins following the boy all over town in an effort to discover where the child may have originally died. Lucky for him the child leads him to a school where Tun witnesses the boy leap to his death from the balcony of the school building. Case closed, right? Wrong! Turns out the boy didn’t meet his end on the front steps of the school but quite possibly at the hands of his loving mother. School officials believe the boy’s mother checked him out of the hospital where she and the child were never seen again.
Could Tun have discovered clues to the boy’s burial site though?
After a terrifying face to face encounter with the child, Tun is forced to shoot at the child in public in an effort to stop an attack on a drunken bystander. Instead of helping the situation, Tun accidentally shoots and wounds a young woman and a police officer. Hashimoto’s government sponsors are no longer interested in the research…they want Hashimoto arrested, his team disbanded and the Menger Sponge confiscated. Is the boy’s connection to his burial site the key to Hashimoto’s obsession with life after death? What does Hashimoto have planned for the ghost once they his secret to “eternal life?”
Silk is an interesting flick with loads of potential but not all of it was used to great effect. Some of the sub-plots really weren’t clarified which may end up leaving some less-then-attentive viewers scratching their heads in confusion. If you can keep the different motives, character deceptions and sub-plots straight you’ll discover this shares quite a few similarities with films like William Castle’s 13 Ghosts, Dark Castle’s remake Thir13en Ghosts and, to some small degree, Ghostbusters. All of which share the idea that technology may someday allow us to capture, monitor and study supernatural beings in order to come to terms with out own mortality and fear of the unknown. Really folks…imagine being able to capture a ghost, learn how it died, why it comes back and what lies beyond this plain of existence. The idea is exciting and I should have been way more excited about this than I was…but…I wasn’t.
I think the appearance of a “long-haired ghost girl” in the final quarter of the film set me on edge a bit and not in an “I’m scared shitless” way either. I’m just so tired of seeing ghost girls that I find myself mentally subtracting stars from some films the minute they roll out the tired old “spooky girl” cliché. In this particular case the story called for “her” but I still was hoping there would be more technobabble about “what lies beyond” and less rehashed scare tactics. I will say that despite some of the sub-plots being a bit hazy, all of them were wrapped up reasonably well with only one or two tiny plot holes remaining. The film was pretty fast-paced, the dialogue quite good and the acting solid.
I wouldn’t say Silk is horrible though it falls short of being great. It’s good, it’s occasionally scary and the concept was interesting. Check it out when you get the chance.
By the way, the writer/director of this film, Chao-Bin Su, is actually co-writing a remake of the timeless Kung Fu classic Master of the Flying Guillotine!! The remake is to be simply retitled Flying Guillotine and slated for a 2008 release! I DIG THAT BABY!! YOU GO SU!
