Customer Reviews

Inner Senses (Special Edition)

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

"Inner Senses," is a highly recommended film. The film gives the viewer the suggestion of horror, and does so in a way that is refreshing. Are there ghosts? Or does our mind play tricks on us? Do we see what we want to see? Or are there unforeseen forces in the universe? The film begins with Jim Law (Leslie Cheung) who portrays a psychiatrist. We see that Jim is overworked, and never has time for himself. He immerses himself in his practice helping others. One of his newest patients is suicidal woman who claims to see ghosts. This patient, Yan, (Kar Yan Lam) gives an excellent performance as a disturbed young woman. She has been referred to Dr. Law by his friend and colleague, Dr. Wilson Chan (Waise Lee). Dr. Chan's connection to the young women is personal: Yan is a relative of his wife, therefore, he believes that her case should be handled by an outsider.

The opening scene in the films narrative sets the tone of the film. Here we see a little background about Dr. Jim Law. We find that he does not believe in ghosts of other supernatural phenomena, and personally debunks ghosts at a college seminar. He tells his audience of students and faculty that these are primitive holdovers from events in their lives that they carry with them, due to their upbringing, and also due to the constant bombardment of horror films that reinforce their belief in the supernatural. Further, Dr. Law states to the students that in Asian society this is reinforced further by the cultural attitudes of local Asian beliefs and customs.

When Yan is sent to Dr. Law, she finds this newest psychiatrist a welcome relief. She even begins to fall in love with him. As the films narrative progresses, we see that her health improves. Moreover, Yan finds a renewed belief in her own self esteem. There are some extremely edge of your seat scenes of Yan, and her interaction with the ghosts that she is encountering. Yet, the viewer questions whether or not she is really seeing ghosts, or if this is all in her mind. However, it appears that Yan's therapy seems to be going well. Eventually, Yan is becoming cured. But events unfolding in Dr. Laws life does not seem to be going very well. He begins to see the ghost of a young girl from his past. Is he seeing ghosts? Or is this caused by the stress of overwork? The film lets the viewer decide what is happening.

Yet, the fact remains however, that Jim is now haunted by a ghost. And his colleagues notice that something is amiss with him when he tries to do Electro-Shock-Therapy on himself. As the viewer you might say that the ghosts are inner ghosts that haunt us all. Or maybe Jim really is seeing ghosts? The question is put to the viewer--is this real, or is it in the heads of the two aforementioned individuals: Jim and Yan. That is what I liked about this film. It is nuanced, suggestive, and little slow paced, so that the viewer gets to see the character development of the actors in the film. On a sad note, this would be the last film by actor Leslie Cheung, prior to his suicide in 2003. And the similarities in the films conclusion is always a sad watch for me. The film is highly recommended.

I found it to be quite surprising and moving towards the end. The scary parts of the movie never seem forced, and the basic premise that our own repressed memories and guilt can conjure up horrors far worse than any "real" ghosts can is what sets this movie apart from most of it's suspense or horror counterparts. Leslie Cheung gives a great performance, making this a fitting Swan Song, but Karina Lam carries the movie for most of the first half in such an admirable fashion that she deserves kudos as well.

"Inner Senses" is another great horror movie to come out of Asia in recent years. However, it suffers from a certain lack of originality. Its basic premise imitates that of "The Sixth Sense" i.e. psychiatrist tries to help troubled person who sees dead people. The horror scenes in the last minutes of "Inner Senses" also borrow heavily from Japan's "Ring". Such weaknesses aside, "Inner Senses" is certainly an intelligent horror movie, much more so than my other Asian favourite to come out in 2002, "The Eye". While "The Eye" goes all out to scare audiences, "Inner Senses" prefers to make audiences think beyond what they are witnessing on the screen. In what is probably his last great performance, Leslie Cheung is Jim, a psychiatrist who works in a mental hospital. Jim is an atheist who places his faith in science and has no time for superstitious nonsense, including religion. As he states in his lecture at the beginning of the movie, "ghosts" are all in the mind, the result of the mind putting together various randomly accumulated information about a society's superstitions. He agrees to take on a client as a favour for a colleague. Karena Lam is Yan, a troubled girl who claims to see dead people. She lives in terror of the strange visitors who visits her apartment, especially her kindly (but somewhat mentally unbalanced) landlord's long dead wife and child. She plasters all her glass windows and mirrors in her apartment with newspapers to avoid seeing "things". Jim works hard to free Yan of her fears and successfully convinces her that none of her visions are real. They are the result of her loneliness, troubled childhood, failed relationships, overactive imagination and neighbours' pranks. But once Yan is freed of her visions, Jim starts to see a dead teenage girl himself ... she hums a strangely familiar tune, giggles at some secret joke, and follows him around. He has flashbacks about his teenage years and sleepwalks looking for something from the past ... something so terrible that he has buried the memories in unreachable places in his mind. Yan has to help him figure out what it is before his visions destroy him. "Inner Senses" will have audiences thinking long after the end of the movie. Although "ghosts" do make multiple spine-tingling appearances in "Inner Senses", we are not told unequivocally that they are, in fact, ghosts. The protagonists' experiences can rightly be attributed to their fractured mental conditions. Leslie Cheung and Karena Lam both give outstanding performances as flawed people coping with inexplicable and terrifying events. The last minutes of "Inner Senses" eerily foreshadow Leslie Cheung's suicide in 2003. The Chinese movie world has lost a great entertainer, but his memory will remain with us.

This movie starts of creepy then slow then again
really creepy and then sad.I don't know why they call
it hong kong's SIXTH SENSE because it really isn't
anything like it.All I have to say is that this movie
is really creepy and it deserves a look.

Inner Senses is not a common ghost story and not a horror film in a popular, general meaning. Although all the elements seem to be intact and there are plenty of scenes and moments you'll jump on your seat watching. Line "I see dead people" don't frighten or surprise us anymore. Every second character in every other movie nowdays sees dead people, so what? Hence the more sophisticated Inner Senses get because it's actually not about ghosts and not about scaring a viewer. It's more of a drama camouflaged as a horror hilm.

In the beginning, when psychiatrist Jim starts seeing his patient Yan, he tells her he never understood why other shrinks try to make their patients remember the past, extract their darkest recollections from the remote corners of their memory. Why - if a person tried to forget it so much there had to be reasons. This speech of his will rise to the surface again in the end of the film, and a viewer will be reminded of them by what's going on on screen. When it's getting obvious Jim has issues with the past himself - issues he can't get over although he forgot everything a long time ago - we see a person can't totally forget and what's more important - shouldn't. Some things from the past can rule your life even if you don't know about it, they can ruin your whole existence and eat you alive because once you couldn't get rid of them or solve them. That's what happens to Jim, and we see the film's message as a vivid reminder to everyone that it's a bad thing to suppress your memories, ghosts will always come back to haunt you.

Inner Senses is quite a moody film, it's melancholic and sad. It has a brilliant score perfectly underlining its subject let alone atmosphere. Hadn't I knew I'd say it's a Korean film - so obviously it reminds of some best examples of Korean pictures - but it's a movie made in Hong Kong which has this common hidden topic for all the Hong Kong movies (as it seems to me) of a giant megapolis acting as a place where people are bound to be lonely and suffer from incomprehension. This is just some feeling I get watching HK films, and this theme of the City adds pretty much to the story here and for the spirit (no pun intended) of Inner Senses. To my opinion it's one of the most outstanding examples of contemporary Asian cinema of the genre, if you set your eyes on Face and Koma for example, Inner Senses is your kind of a movie.

This film is about a lot of things but if I had to pick one it would be two sides of the ghost debate: do they or do they not exist?

When we come into the story we meet Yan, a twenty-something, unmarried girl who has been tortured, almost daily, by the spirits of the afterlife that she sees everywhere she goes. She cannot escape them and has even gone so far as to cover every single glass surface of her apartment (windows, mirrors, TVs) so that she cannot see their reflection.

She is estranged from her family save for a female cousin that has promised to take care of her and makes her go to therapy to sort it all out. The cousin's husband, a psychiatrist who also believes in ghost, feels that his wife's cousin is too high-maintenance and so he won't treat her. Instead, he suggests she go to a friend of his, Jim, who is better equipped to handle her.

Then we meet Jim, the non-believing psychiatrist, who conducts lectures at the local college and explains away the ghost factor by stating it's all in one's mind. And that the only reason why people believe there are ghosts is that they have been conditioned to believe in them since childhood, in the form of twisted stories designed to scare little children into submission. What everyone doesn't know about Jim, though, is that he's not as perfect as he seems. He's got Insomnia and it plays a major role in his life.

The two meet and begin seeing each other three times a week for Yan's sessions. Jim tries to get Yan to open up and tell him what's really going on but Yan insists she's not sick and that ghosts are real.

As the story progresses, Yan and Jim's relationship deepens and they become romantically involved. While Jim continues to be an insomniac and sleepwalk, Yan is seemingly cured from her ability to see ghosts. For a time both are happy.

Toward the end, however, the roles are reversed where the patient becomes the caretaker and the doctor becomes the patient.

We finally come to the closure where we find out why Jim can't sleep, why he sleepwalks and why Yan had a very good reason to be afraid.

I liked the story because of the way one ghost was portrayed. Usually we see movies where the ghost is just out to cause irrevocable harm and the individuals who come across it are just at the wrong place at the wrong time (Poltergeist), or the ghost causes trouble in order to get someone's attention because they need help (The Changeling).

This story was different because it involves a persistent ghost that hasn't forgotten a promise made to them and is hellbent on making sure it's remembered. No matter what the cost is.

If you read up on ghost lore you'll often see references to ghosts showing up because they have unfinished business to attend to. That they can't rest until this unfinished business is satisfied. This movie is about that and a bit more, it's a love story gone horribly wrong, it's about blocking out unpleasant things and why it's probably better to just face your fear and it's about two people that have more in common than meets the eye.

There was one part in this movie that gave me the chills. That alone is cause for celebration, at least for me, because I've seen a lot of horror movies.

Most fail to do this so I like when one is able to because it makes me feel as if I didn't waste two hours of my life. This story isn't a waste but if you're looking for constant tension that doesn't let up, I'd recommend The Grudge or Ju-On.

Taking a page (or two) from the Sixth Sense, this movie is about a girl who think she sees ghosts, and the unbelieving psychologist that tries to help her. Things get tense when the doctor starts to see ghosts as well.
Part romance, part ghost story, this movie is mostly about how we cope with our pasts. Although it is well acted by Leslie Cheung and Karena Lam, and very well shot and directed the movie starts to ramble in the last half hour or so and although there are hints and clues all over the place, by the end you'll be left wondering how the details all fit together.
Although this is by no means a bad movie, I'd recommend picking up The Sixth Sense or the Pang Brothers The Eye, recently released on DVD and VHS in the US. If those aren't available, give this a shot, there are certainly worse ways to spend 90 minutes.

Leslie Cheung plays a man with a secret. He begins a descent into madness when he starts seeing a dead girl from his past. Memories churn as he is haunted by her. The film slowly builds in suspense until it climaxes in an unexpected ending which is not one that you'd see in most Hollywood films.
Leslie Cheung is great in his last role. If one is a fan of Leslie Cheung or Hong Kong horror/suspense films, then I'd reccomend getting it.

Not enough has been forthcoming, unfortunately, in deference to our beloved Leslie Cheung, whose final film before his shocking and heart-numbing suicide resonates with the kind of haunting emotional static that confounds the mind, terrifies the soul, and renders helpless the heart's desire to rescue this good and beautiful, yet tormented person, too tortured by his OWN "inner senses," to give US prognosticative Leslie-loving ghosts (the actual HEALERS in the movie) sufficient insight by which to have read the warning signs of, and thereby take protective actions on behalf of, a twisted, roiling spirit in extremis.

Whether or not SOME PEOPLE understood what Leslie's real-life fate would be, having witnessed his "reel" fate in "Inner Senses," is a moot argument. The man who threw himself from atop a penthouse-style bar in a ritzy downtown Hong Kong Hotel that fateful day in April 2003, cannot REWIND the REAL. There is no PAUSE button. Everybody thought it was an "April Fool's Stunt," another bout of virtual unreality, over-the-top Leslie-style (no sick pun intended). Yet ... no joke: Leslie's gone. There is no REWIND. No STOP! The millions of Leslie worshippers worldwide CANNOT edit or redact "cinema verite" in the post-production dailies room, when the verity trump-cards "the reel world." Leslie's death was real. Why didn't we see it coming? And why could we not rescue him, from himself, or to the "inner senses" ostensibly beyond his control, or the control of his doctors and well-intentioned "caregivers," to harness constructively and organically transmogrify Leslie's "overwhelming demons" into "outer-others-centered, constructively happifying senses." Why couldn't we help Leslie recover from his not unsurprising depression? Why could we not turn the compost of his seeming dreadful future into eternal living roses?

Notwithstanding Leslie, as cinema qua cinema, "Inner Senses" is just okay. It's not as brilliant in its plotline as "The Sixth Sense," to which its been compared voluminously, yet by no means would I assign any sense of plagiaristic causation, either intentional or otherwise, to this initially small but now prodigiously huge gift from Hong Kong to the wide world of horror fans (and the rest of us) who feast or engender our curiosity upon the macabre and the gothic, no matter how faded, jaded or jejune.

Which is, in the end, probably the reason that we did NOT observe, let alone understand, the red alarm bells ringing everywhere throughout Cheung's "cinematic suicide letter" to us - exit, stage loft. And thus, Leslie Cheung became the "Richard Cory" at the dawn of the 21st century. "He fluttered pulses when he said, 'Good morning,' and [she] glittered when [she] walked." We were far too enamored with Leslie Cheung "The Demigod" and "Goddess," to perceive the androgyne so-fastidiously concealed, so sufferingly sheltered, within the velvet mask.

"Inner Senses" earns its 5 stars alone because Leslie Cheung is in it, and what's even more germane, its his swan song to us, his adoring "fandemic." That fandemic has only burgeoned with the loss of our favorite Cantonese son, secret idol, phantasy lover, and immortal beloved.

So what could we have done to save a precious life, not an icon, but a real life. It is rare but unbearably compelling, that we incorporate film into art therapy, the groundbreaking therapeutic neoscience, not so necessarily groundbreaking or "neo," given the fact its been in our arsenal of healing medicinal oeuvre for over 5,000 years. Only recently, however, has ANY SIGNIFICANT scientific credence at all been vouchsafed to Oriental intra-inter-integrative therapies. You could say, especially in the high-profile case of Cheung, "it's all been a terrible Occident."

Many would point out that my thoughts and ideas here are fuzzy-speculative at best, refried dog turd at worst. But what CAN we learn from film? Are we mere passive intakers of 24 frames per second confabulatory unreality? Or do we SEE the men and women behind the facades of fable, the story behind the story tellers? Do we even care?

Well, I think it is fair to say we cared a LOT when Leslie left us, just as we did when John Belushi, Chris Farley, and so many other shining lights burnt out before our startled eyes, like the klieg lights in a shutting-down theater. Even the divorce of Nicole Kidman to Tom Cruise following the grueling creation of "Eyes Wide Shut" (which effectively killed director Stanley Kubrick's "marriage" (his life, fueled by filmic art) as well), serves as a clue to the reality that we as star-gazers have at least some responsibility, in preserving our "guiding-stars in Wide-screen Technicolor Heaven" from burning out irreplaceably.

But stars are stars. How do we reach them; even traveling at the speed of cinematic light, which most of us are quite inept at doing? We expect our movie stars, like our baseball idols, basketball heroes, wrestling juggernauts and even, yes - many living religious compassion gardeners (the tender-hearted little monk Thich Nhat Hanh comes to mind), to be beyond our ken, the reach which exceeds our grasp. Yet what's a Heaven for?

All of us are human. The good, the bad, we CANNOT dualize reality and confound the indomitable paradox of the unity of the web of all life.

Had Cheung been able to read the new book just out, "Yi Shu: The Art of Living With Change - Integrating Traditional Chinese Medicine, Psychodrama, and The Creative Arts," authored by internationally-acclaimed Professor, Psychologist, Social Worker, Artist and Art Therapist Gong Shu of Saint Louis, Missouri (published by F.E. Robbins & Sons Press), and had he been able to be under the care of Dr. Gong, whose compassion I find boundless and who saved my own, unfamous, unglamorous but nonetheless REAL life in 1995 from certain self-slaughter, for any length of time - then perhaps we would be enjoying Leslie's latest celluloid dessert tomorrow, or perhaps Leslie would decide to abandon theatre altogether, in favor of a more relaxed, less phantasy-imbrued, less hyper-virtual "sur-REELity" lifeline. We just don't know, or can ever know. Leslie left us, not with a swan song after all, but with a tragic and forever-inexplicable, swan dive. We failed him, not as cineastes, but as compassionate contemplators and activists ourselves, in the all-too-real and inarguably cruel, world each one of us knows as "the living stage."

I watched the film called "The Eye," which I stronly recommend to everyone, a couple of months ago and loved it. Asian horror movies are a lot better than most American ones because they are much more poetic. I saw "Inner Senses" as I was walking through Blockbuster and thought I would give it a try. I thought it was going to be as good as "The Eye" but in fact it wasn't. It's not that it wasn't good, it was just not what I thought it would be. I don't think it's as scary as "The Eye" but that's just my opinion. Besides that, I thought that the message behind the movie was interesting. I think that this movie is a must for someone who likes romance and horror/ghost movies. If you're looking to get scared out of your pants, then watch something else like "The Eye." But I must forewarn that these kinds of movies are not non-stop action and horror: patience is the key my friend!