THEY WAIT

An opening prologue begins with an aged hunter finding a bleeding tree in a Pacific Northwest forest, then being attacked by a fast-moving demon in broad daylight. We then rewind 50 years, where a coffin is exhumed in China and it's skeletal contents are shipped off to Shanghai for sake keeping.

The film begins proper in present-day Shanghai, where we meet American Sarah (Jaime King). She's living there with partner Jason (Terry Chen) and son Sammy (Regan Oey), in the promise that they'll relocate to the US to raise Sammy there, once Jason's business here is finished.

Jason is woken one night by a phone call advising of the aged hunter's - his uncle - death. He makes haste the following day to the Pacific Northwest for the funeral. In what proves to be an unwise move, Sarah and Sammy accompany him. This coincides with Sammy's growing fear of the supernatural, and the fact that it's the beginning of a local tradition known as "hungry ghost month" …

Sitting staring at the dead uncle's blank face during the open casket funeral and listening to the adults mourn does little to settle Sammy's increasing fears, and things get worse when he later begins to see things - a man in the street with a scorpion on his face; people whose faces suddenly turn demonic, and so on.

Stopping with Sarah at a store while she buys aspirin for her headache, Sammy picks up a book on ghosts and demons … and then comes face to face with one. Luckily the shopkeeper (Henry O) scares the ghost away, and then tells Sammy that he is one of only a few people who can see the dead. He tells Sammy that it his duty as a "very kind, sensitive soul" to make piece with the dead in order to pacify them. Sarah misses the bulk of this conversation and so is not overly concerned when the shopkeeper spies her and claims she also has the gift. As they leave, the shopkeeper urges them to return if they ever need his help.

That evening, Sarah and Sammy meet with Jason at his aunt Mei's (Pei-Pei Cheng) house where they stay overnight. During their evening meal, Sarah begins to 'see' things similar to Sammy.

Later in the night, Sammy wakes and is compelled to find out what lies behind a mysterious doorway downstairs. On the other side, he discovers the box of skeletal remains from the prologue. Sarah follows his screams and eventually finds him, dragging him away from the creepy room despite his protests that he has "lots of work to do".

The following morning, Jason leaves to return to China on business - leaving Sarah and Sammy alone with Mei and their increasingly jolting visions …

THEY WAIT benefits from decent production values, adequate performances and some great locations. Visually, it is a frequently rich experience and the insights into Asian cultured and superstitions are portrayed with respectful intelligence.

King is fast becoming a low-rent horror queen of sorts, although her presence still isn't strong enough to carry a lead performance. I never thought I'd write this but, having recently enjoyed the HOUSE OF WAX remake, Elisa Cuthbert is far easier to root for in such roles.

The FX include a fair amount of decent CGI, and the scares are very much in the Asian horror tradition: a mix of slow, creepy build-up and jump shocks. A lot of hallucinating/dreaming occurs too, which again is typical of our Asian friends.

In fact, this curious production (note that the executive producer is one Uwe Boll) is clearly intended as a stab at Asian horror. And it achieves it's goal on the surface, sticking to the conventions of the genre closely (too closely perhaps - even the confused storytelling that plagues these films is present). But THEY WAIT is too steeped in cliché, too devoid of it's own ideas, to register any true excitement or memorable scenes.

It is, in short, nice to look at and competently staged. But it's forgettable, and the latter half - while struggling to make better use of initially peripheral characters - is scatterbrained and illogical. Nice running theme of animals, though.

Continuity and common-sense are not THEY WAIT's strong points. Nor is originality. But the scares come fast, with the odd one even managing to be mildly effective.

The film is presented in a good, smooth anamorphic 1.78:1 transfer with strong colours and detail.

Audio is available in 2.0 and 5.1 mixes, both of which are solid offerings. The dialogue of the film is a mix of Chinese and English (mainly the latter), and English subtitles are burned-in during the Chinese moments.

An animated main menu leads to a static scene-selection menu allowing access to the main feature via 12 chapters.

A 12-minute Making Of documentary is presented as an extra, in non-anamorphic 1.78:1. In it, the cast and crew speak retrospectively of how excited they were to be involved in the project - which had been in production since 2002 - and how pleased they are with the end result. Interspersed throughout with clips from the completed film, this is a very self-congratulatory exercise.

A 75-second trailer for the film is backed up by trailers for FEARS OF THE DARK, BATTLE OF WITS and THE 5TH COMMANDMENT.

I appreciate what the filmmakers were trying to do here (a Canadian production's take on the Asian horror genre), and perhaps several years ago this would've had a greater impact. In 2009 though, this is passable but forgettable DTV fare.

Review by Stu Willis