Double Vision (2002)

 

Director: Chen Kuo-fu

Screenplay: Chen Kuo-fu and Su Chao-pin

Cast: Tony Ka Fai Leung as Huang Huo-tu; David Morse as Kevin Richter; Rene Liu as Ching-fang; Leon Dai as Li Feng-bo; Wei-Han Huang as Mei-Mei

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) #181

 

Double Vision was a film I always wanted to see, and I do not find this sad at all to mention, but it entirely stems from when in the earlier days of DVD, when it was new as a format and exciting, major studios would include catalogues in small booklets in their titles' DVD cases, such as 20th Century Fox or, in this case, Sony Pictures Entertainment. The obscurities that were included among the catalogue titles, and the titles from that era they were trying to promote, were the ones that caught my interest the most, and Double Vision's DVD cover, an eerie one with an eye with two pupils within it against a dark blue background, is evocative to say the least.

Contextually Double Vision is interesting in how it was made. Taiwanese born director Chen Kwo-fu, originally a film maker but also becoming a producer, became the head of Columbia Picture's Asian branch in 2000, part of Sony Pictures Entertainment. As a result, this project was clearly made for two purposes. One in having a big studio distribute it internationally, and with an American co-lead with David Morse, of The Langoliers (1995), to still sell to the West, as a fish-out-of-water FBI serial killer profiler in Taiwan. The second clearly was to attempt a big budget horror film in Taiwan for a Taiwanese audience. Immediately in, a still born twin opening its eyes, just after being taken out by a caesarean from its mother, what was mean as a big Taiwanese production still has some teeth to it.

In Taipei, a series of bizarre deaths transpire. A boss of a company "drowns" in his own seventeenth floor office; a fire death transpires in an apartment without any fire damage, and a foreign Christian priest is disembowelled, with his intestines even washed and put back in, without a sense that he moved at all from his bed. Immediately I think of all the American serial killer films that came before, although I will just go to Se7en (1995). It was a film I saw in my youth which was both a) a huge surprise hit, cementing David Fincher to go on with his career, but b) also a film in hindsight which is comically over the top in how elaborate and painstakingly put together any of the crimes by its killer were. Interestingly, whilst in Se7en, the link to Judeo-Christian belief, as the murders are based on the Seven Deadly Sins, are tangential we have in Double Vision instead a film which does not hold back submerging into Taoism and the supernatural. When the only real clue behind the deaths comes from a fungus [Spoiler Warning] bug born and carried by mites [Spoiler Ends], the people investigating the murders, including the stereotypical jaded cop with a broken marriage, will have to plunge into Taoist beliefs eventually.

The most rewarding detail of Double Vision, as the film progresses as a crime thriller with a gristly edge, is its decision to explicit tackle Taoist faith, demonstrated by Morse's confusion over what are called charms, wards against evil spirits which are tiny red textile pouches the police pass around to each other and hang off a car's rear-view mirror. Naturally Morse is the Western, rational scientific sceptic in the midst of a case ultimately based on the six Hells of Taoist belief, of such names like "Heart Removal Hell" to go through, something wishing to sacrifice others based on their sins to become immortal.

I think (fully admitting I am an outsider white Englishman who wrote this review with scant knowledge of Taoism) some creative license was used, but the ideas are real beliefs. Taoist hell, and even Buddhist hell, as not all Buddhists are those we stereotype as gentle figures of a spiritual belief based on no figurative Gods but reincarnation and enlightenment of the soul, are based on the idea of the "Diyu". Actually, they have even more Hells, varying per version and country, with even a theme park in Singapore, Haw Par Villa, with a section devoted to lovingly recreating Hells that would even cause Dante Alighieri and Virgil to turn blanche. In Taoism and Chinese mythology, there is also the "Xian", immortal beings whose existence vary in interpretations, but do include a philosophical context to of attain spiritual transcendence or enlightenment. Even, if more medically based, the notion of what that title means connects to the real life phenomena of "Polycoria", a condition where a person can literally have two pupils in one eye, or at least more than one pupillary opening in the iris; some real examples, if you search there, are startling in literally two pupils in one eye, but others also show that people with this condition suffer from optical conditions which medical eye surgery may need to step in to assist with.

With this in mind, this film takes the route (effectively) of modern Taiwan still being influence and haunted by its ghosts. As an outsider looking in, even in this position it feels an obvious divide exists in the West to the East in how spirituality co-exists with the modern world, just from films and pop culture a sense that, even if there were still sceptics, atheists or just people worked and living to the point they never consider it, spirituality and traditions exist more side-by-side in Asian countries with the modern world than many Western ones, even in terms of between first world countries. A premise like this in an English language film would have a post-ironic edge to it, a sense of disconnect as religion is not traditionally held aloof in American or British cinema at all baring smaller examples like American Evangelical cinema.

It does, including its frankly terrible original poster of a dead baby in a medical jar, have more edge than American films from this time period in places. It is not a Category III Hong Kong film in terms of intenseness, that infamous genre based on their highest age rating a trend from the eighties into the mid-nineties. What it does have in compensation, following the narrative beats tried and worn in crime mystery cinema, is some edge regardless, the tropes of American films combined the dualism of faith and the modern world. In fact that that this is modern Taiwan, as with any genre film shot in a different region or country, adds its own touches too; only two years earlier, this type of environment was the kind that Edward Yang, in his last film Yi Yi (2000), had filmed in for intimate dramas...suddenly invaded by this lurid crime mystery that does qualify for a horror film too.

To make sense of what is happening in this film, you do not just go to a Taoist priest for advice, but a scholar who can dive into the beliefs and especially when ancient texts are involved. This is where the conventional beats of this genre do succeed. It is melodramatic, but this populist story with supernatural plotting is for more tempting for folklore beliefs and me now, more sincere in tackling religious and folk believes then a disconnected sense of merely trying to be a horror film without earnestness. That is why I can get behind this dark urban crime thriller narrative where, as someone states in the police force earlier, they might not even be able to deal with this crime because they were trained as officers of the law for flesh and blood criminals, not supernatural figures. Likewise, when a business company is reveal to secretly house a Taoist temple that will gladly slaughter cops to defend themselves, it feels an unsubtle but poignant metaphor that, good or bad, even modern faiths such as business could still be beholden to the ancient ones.

Openly, Double Vision does get ridiculous in a detracting way, ironically because as Chen Kuo-fu wanted to bring Hollywood production values to his film, he brought over the clichéd narrative beats too. Where Double Vision suffers is those Hollywood influences feel contrived to try to entertain the viewers. Not like when Americans films of yore feel earnest in their happy ending mind. Here, some would roll their eyes when a character dies only to come back to life for their family's sake, but I wonder if that is just a small minority exists of jaded English speaking cineastes who do not realise the majority of people, West or East, would gain an emotional pleasure (even if trite) in a happy ending. For me the greater concern is that, with the finally confrontation with the culprit, the ending becomes an extended series of nightmare psych-outs and CGI. This is what I call the real issue I have with Hollywood in terms of tropes and its beats, when all the slow and methodical pace, the crime genre meat and potatoes, and the fascinating use of Taoist faith, gets boiled down for an ending that is paced and designed like a theme park ride, and not even a good one at that. Double Vision was still a watchable, rewarding experience, but endings to films have always been what I have been fussy with, and this is an example I would point to of why.