Product Details

• Actors: Angelica Lee
• Format: AC-3, Color, Dolby, DVD, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Language: Cantonese
• Subtitles: English
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rated: R (Restricted)
• Studio: Image Entertainment
• DVD Release Date: September 23, 2008
• Run Time: 108 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (42 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B001BEK87Y
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #73,389 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)
• For more information about "Re-Cycle" visit the Internet Movie Database (IMDb)

Editorial Reviews

RE CYCLE - DVD Movie

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

26 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Where the lost things go, August 29, 2008

By 

E. A Solinas "ea_solinas" (MD USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Re-Cycle [Blu-ray] (Blu-ray)

Imagine a dimension where all things that have been discarded and abandoned go -- broken toys, unwanted babies, the forgotten elderly, even fictional characters who never made the cut.

After a run of relatively disappointing movies, Danny and Oxide Pang return with a vengeance in "Re-Cycle," a hauntingly vivid journey that sends Angelica Lee into such a world. This is not your typical Asian horror movie with ripoffs of "The Ring" -- this is a dark fantasy journey into a ghastly, bittersweet otherworld full of secrets and lost things, like a Lewis Carroll horror story.

Ting-Yin (Lee) is a bestselling author riding high with her "My Love" trilogy, which is being adapted into a movie. Her next book, a horror novel named "Re-Cycle," is announced as well.

All seems perfect, save for an ex-boyfriend (Lawrence Chou) who has just divorced his wife and wants back. And when Ting-Yin starts writing "Re-Cycle," she starts glimpsing a strange long-haired woman in her apartment -- and ends up inadvertently wandering into a desolate, ruined city full of zombies, stairs, creaking carnivals and masked children. It's a dimension of the discarded, and it stretches through nightmarish forests, cities, fields and decaying bridges filled with witchlight.

When she's attacked by ghouls, Ting-Yin is rescued by a little girl who offers to help her get back home. After consulting with an old man in a vast library, Ting-Yin is told that she must find the Transit that leads back to her world. But Ting-Yin and the little girl Ting-Yu -- who seems strangely familiar to her -- are being pursued by a strange faceless woman, who is determined to keep Ting-Yin there forever

"Re-Cycle" is a very different movie from anything the Pang Brothers have done before -- it's fantasy rather than straight horror, and more in the vein of a grimier "Mirrormask" or a more horrific "Pan's Labyrinth." You could even consider it a sort of nightmarish "Alice in Wonderland," if Notsowonderland were populated by zombies, ghouls, fetuses and the occasional weird little old man.

For the first twenty minutes, "Re-Cycle" looks pretty much like a standard Asian horror movie, with a black-haired woman darting around in the shadows and lots of weird occurrences. But when Ting-Yin wanders into this other world, suddenly things become pure dark fantasy, and this rather generic character blossoms as she becomes close to little Ting-Yu.

And the Pangs' direction is pretty brilliant. They flood the skies with strangely coloured light, and give the fields and cities a mummified, dead feeling. There's not a lot of dialogue in this movie, which makes the vivid imagery all the more important -- we travel from a land of crumbling buildings and grotesque forests to sunny fields and floating mountains. It's poisonous, yet somehow still beautiful.

Yet there are also moments of whimsy, such as Ting-Yu riding in to the rescue on a giant toy horse. And while there's some straight-out horror like the faceless woman and the whole fetus cavern scene, the Pangs also imbue some scenes with poignancy. One particularly heartbreaking scene takes place among the elderly who were neglected and forgotten, and who plaintively hold up their hands to Ting-Yin in hopes of receiving a grave flower.

Angelica Lee is the glue that holds this movie together -- rather than doing the standard horror performance of running around looking scared, she gives a subtle, layered performance with moments of dread, surprise, tension, sorrow and love. And Yaqi Zeng gives a magnificent performance as the mysterious Ting-Yu, who has a heavily foreshadowed connection to Ting-Yin. Their final scene together is utterly heartbreaking, yet somehow satisfying.

The ending is a bit of a brain-twister, though. It makes sense in a bizarre way, given what has been written before, but it feels vaguely incomplete and leaves you wondering just what will happen next.

"Re-Cycle" is a haunting, horrifying ride through a strange world where the abandoned things end up, and shows the Pang Brothers in top form. Not your typical Asian horror flick.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars I'm Glad I own it inspite of its flaws, December 9, 2008

By 

bunnyrabbit4 (New Orleans, LA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Re-Cycle [Blu-ray] (Blu-ray)

THE PROS....
This film starts out with some of the best chill/thrill/ photography that I have seen in a long time. It also works off the stark beauty of the lead actress whose subtle emotional displays are frequently seen in close up. Blu-ray is usually showcased with nature scenes, but its ability to capture the human face is what most interests me. The special effects here are also beautiful and run seamlessly along side of a variety of camera and editing techniques. It is a feast of the small stuff done well, like chopping a few seconds of film out of an action sequence to create a feeling of dimensional shift and unreality. Each scene is artistically framed for maximum effect. Especially in the begining of the film, the edits literally keeping you jumping. Elements of traditional Asian masks are blended with simple make up techniques to keep the film from becoming bogged down with too much flashy CGI. Often I find that CGI films have one or two scenes that everyone talks about and once you've seen them the funs over. This film uses a variety of subtle color shifts, camera movements and sets to approach each scene with a fresh cinematic voice. Speaking of voice, you really don't have to worry about the film being in Cantonese. Once the films gets going there is minimal dialog.

THE CONS....
I was so visually engaged by the film that I did not began to worry about the plot until the last 15 or 20 minutes. Even after the social issue theme intruded on what had been a very good visual ride, the film managed to shift gears again at the very end and give me something to mull over as the credits rolled. But that last 15 could have been so much better. If I could edit this film I would take out a jarring, sugary sweet montage sequence near the end. I felt like it removed me too far from the film's psychological edginess. Exiting the lead character from her strange world while her pain over a loss was at its zenith would have made the film and last few minutes work much better. Horror films that seek to send moral or emotional messages frequently make this kind of mistake since the message is invariably part of the plot resolution. I agree with another reviewer that the script deserves a three, but the photography and CGI are 5 star. I can't wait to share this one with friends.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars ARE YOU IN CHIME WITH YOUR INNER WORLD? YOU'D BETTER BE..., March 10, 2007

By 

Anton Ilinski (Moscow, Russia) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Re-cycle (Standard Edition) DVD (DVD)

Re-cycle is a relatively new tour de force by Pang brothers and probably one of their last movies made in Hong Kong. After Re-cycle Oxide Pang shot Diary - a curious little psychological thriller and then both he and his brother Danny moved to Hollywood. Hope they'll succeed there because after all these years of making really nice movies it'll be a shame if they blow their chance there.

To tell the truth Re-cycle is a film like no other I've seen. I wouldn't be able to find a similar one neither in Asian cinema nor in Western cinema. Maybe if you need some resembling I'd recall What Dreams May Come with Robin Williams and The Cell with Jennifer Lopez although the second one stands pretty far. You won't find a single similar film in the Pangs' filmography. Neither their "Bangkok trilogy" nor their "The Eye trilogy" nor Ab-normal Beauty, nor The Tesseract are close to what they invented here. They invented, some people invested, and finally we got a real piece of art, an outstanding film, a picture which you ought to see even if you're not a big fan of Hong Kong cinema and of Pang brothers in particular. It's like Citizen Kane or The Matrix - you've got to see it to... just to see it. In no way I'm comparing Re-cycle to the above-mentioned two, it's just that this movie is something very rare nowdays, a movie made with sheer devotion, bright imagination and limitless fantasy. It's really like no other. You may not like the story-line or CGI (they're great though) or acting, but anyway if you want to see something fresh - try this one.

It's useless to retell the story, I'd just say a few words that pretty much say it all - a young writer (played by beautiful Angelica Lee from Koma and The Eye) finds herself in her imaginary world. What at first looks like a world of dreams or illusions then turns out a world of all things rejected, refused and negated - from thoughts to people. Certainly Lee's character has some mission to accomplish in this world, and I have to say this place is full of peril and is not so easy to leave.

Two-disc Hong Kong edition has great booklets with some art design where you're shown what you (along with Angelica Lee's character) are going to encounter in the world of Re-cycle (believe me even the sketches impress a lot, not mentioning the movie itself). Here are some places' names, and the rest is up to your imagination untill you see the film: Playground of the Damned, Forest of Hang, Toy Ruin, City of Books, Ghost's Bridge, Embryo Tunnel... I say you may not like Re-cycle after all, but you'll definately appraise its ingenuity. By the way I'll be much surprised if it's not in a remake list of all major Hollywood studios. And just as a remark - Re-cycle became a real hit in Asia and was very warmly received at Cannes film festival.