Horror Hotline... Big Head Monster (2001)

Posters featuring wide-eyed screamers, a dodgy-looking monster drawing, suspicious-sounding blurb that the film's based on fact, and a ridiculous English title betray the tense atmospherics of Cheang Pou-soi's latest film. Audiences wandering in to cinemas expecting vaguely spooky amusements are instead treated to a change of pace and a even shock or two in Horror Hotline... Big Head Monster.

The plot sees a US TV crew pop into town to film the hosts of the Horror Hotline radio show -- a phone-in forum for ghost stories. On the first day of shooting a decades-old Big Head Baby tale rears it's many-eyed face again.

A caller phones in to tell about his schoolyard spookout in the 1960s, blurting out the monster's name before his phone runs dead. Soon the lines run hot with other listeners, retelling years of Big Head horrors. Events soon take a turn for the grimmer when the Horror Hotline folks take their film crew visitors to see a mystic who warns them away from pursuing the Big Head tales any further. The team ignores her warning, of course, and soon all manner of hellish happenings build around them.

Director Cheang Pou-soi (Diamond Hill) and his team feeds the urban tale to the audience with restraint, sidestepping images of the monster and pulling back from gore action other low-budgeters might threaten audiences with. Folks from the local Twilight Zone radio show, on which Horror Hotline is based around, even took on consultant roles to the filmmakers for added authenticity. Distractions from all things supernatural are few as sparing humour ties in smoothly with the urban ghost tales -- a play on a South China Morning Post exorcism earlier this year is a nifty addition.

The plot ably keeps in line with the uneasy tension that builds as effective locations, casting, lighting and fierce sound combine to make Horror Hotline one of the finest local stabs at the genre in the last couple of years. Only a disappointingly derivative finale lets the side down, stylistically out of step with all that precedes it and threatening one's appreciation of the film as a whole. Thankfully, the assured filmmaking before this misstep reinforces that Cheang's credit is one to keep looking out for on future releases, especially in the horror genre.

Above: Horror Hotline... Big Head Monster printed billboard at the Empire Theatre.

Credits:

Directed by Soi Cheang (Cheang Pou-soi)
Starring Francis Ng, Josie Ho, Sam Lee, Michelle Zhang and Wilson Yip (cameo)