KOMA
Gau ming (Cantonese) Jiu ming (Mandarin) “Help” or “Save Life”
2004, Panorama Entertainment #PANDVD406063/Poker Industries, DD-5.1 & 2.0/ DTS-ES/MA/16:9/LB/ST/+, $19.99, 87m 55s, DVD-3 By John Charles
After a night of celebration at
a friend’s wedding, drunken bridesmaid Fung Chi-ching (An- gelica Lee Sinjie) searches for her hotel room but, instead, makes the instantly sobering discovery of a naked, bloody woman. She is the latest victim of a maniac who has been drugging and re- moving the kidneys of various victims, whom he then leaves in a bathtub full of ice so that they have a fighting chance at sur- vival. The incident hits very close to home for Chi-ching, as she is suffering from renal failure and needs a new kidney herself. How- ever, because of Chi-ching’s rare blood type, this is something that even her family’s considerable wealth cannot provide. Hailing from a far more humble back- ground, Suen Ling (Karena Lam Kar-yan) is an intense, indepen- dent girl determined to care for her comatose mother, no mat- ter what the financial toll. She was noticed by Chi-ching at the hotel that evening, in the vicinity of the victim’s room. The two also have a second connection: Chi-ching’s doctor boyfriend Wai (NIGHTMARES IN PRECINCT 7’s Andy Hui Chi-on). Frustrated by Chi-ching’s inability to make love, he accepted Ling’s offer of a one- night stand. Although Ling is eventually cleared of the hotel mutilation, she begins to harass Chi-ching with a series of vicious, threatening phone calls that leave the sheltered, sickly girl on the verge of a complete break- down. However, a later incident
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Angelica Lee is driven to the verge of nervous collapse in Law Chi-leung’s stylish horror thriller, KOMA.
very unexpectedly results in the two girls bonding. The organ thief remains on the loose, however , and makes Chi- ching an enticing offer that could either save her life or gruesomely extinguish it. Pairing the very talented and
photogenic leads of THE EYE [VW 103:52] and INNER SENSES [VW 104:7] under the direction of Law Chi-leung (who helmed the lat- ter picture) gave KOMA an en- ticing promotional hook but, happily, there is a terrific film to go along with the hype. While some plot developments flirt with silliness and a couple of the false scares are embarrassingly tele- graphed, this is a very sharp and surprising thriller with some genuinely potent twists. Susan Chan Suk-yin’s screenplay keeps the viewer off-balance by having characters do or say odd, extra- neous things but these asides systematically pay-off as her in- tricately coiled storyline gradu- ally plays out. There are nods to SINGLE WHITE FEMALE and the South Korean thriller SYM- PATHY FOR MR. VENGEANCE, but KOMA confounds most
expectations by consistently keeping one step ahead of the viewer. It also manages to pack a remarkable amount of incident, tension, and character nuance into less than 90m, and the film’s technical components are im- pressive across the board. Law coaxes highly persuasive perfor- mances from the two actresses, and dependable supporting player Liu Kai-chi (CAGEMAN) also does good work as the po- lice captain on the case, observ- ing what seems to be a petty feud between two somewhat unstable women balloon into something far more sinister. The anamorphic transfer has
a few minor problems. The 1.78:1 video mattes do not quite cover the original 1.85:1 hard mattes, creating a distraction in a number of brightly lit scenes (this will not be a problem for those with 16:9 displays, as only a sliver of matte will be visible at the top and bottom of the pic- ture). The image also seems a bit too bright, washing out the blacks somewhat, but colors and detail levels are otherwise very good, doing justice to Chan
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