What best would suit the coming weekend than Asian movies? Here are not one but three movies I invite you to see. And because it’s Tuesday, you’ll have all the necessary time to download buy them before the weekend!

“Three” is a multi-region “horror” anthology from some of the top talents in Asia. The film features three stories which are presented in distinctly different ways. And while the quality of the three parts varies (arghhh… the Thai movie inside…), the result is still artful and the intelligent horror within will definitely appeal most fans of the Asian horror style.

Memories and Going Home are my two favorites movies of the Three triptic (no, I won’t talk about the 3rd movie of Three -The Wheel-).

As for the third movie of this post, Shutter (watch the trailer) is not part of Three, but is another movie I strongly recommend you to see. It’s a full-length Thai horror movie, and it is really excellent.

Memories

Year: 2002
Director: Kim Jee-Woon
Country: Korea

Director Kim Jee-Woon (The Foul King, The Quiet Family) leads things off with Memories, a spare chiller about a husband (Jung Bo-Seog) who’s having visions of his wife’s possible demise. Meanwhile, said wife (Kim Hye-Soo) wakes up in a deserted street with apparently no memory of who she is or how she ended up there. She proceeds to follow whatever clues she can to find her way home, while her husband’s visions begin to get darker and darker.

Kim tells his story with in a spare, quiet manner, and relies on meticulous cinematography and stark composition to unnerve his audience. The atmosphere is not unlike most Japanese horror, and the story is certainly chilling. What’s interesting here is that the story serves no real purpose for the characters. Everything about Memories is designed for audience (mis)information, and Kim takes his time getting there. But the payoff - no matter how expected or even prosiac it may be - feels genuinely haunting.

Going Home

Year: 2002
Director: Peter Chan Ho-Sun
Country: China

Going Home is easily the most emotionally compelling of the three films. The film contains actual characters that test audience sympathy; Yu Fai may be the designated bad guy, but he becomes a much more sympathetic - and likable - character than “good guy” Wai. The revelations behind Going Home are weighed down by too much exposition, but Chan’s efficient direction and Christopher Doyle’s exquisite cinematography make everything easier to swallow. Going Home ranks as the best of the three films as it actually manages to tell a story, and doesn’t just explore a chosen theme or narrative style.

Shutter

Year: 2004
Directors: Banjong Pisanthanakun and Parkpoom Wongpoom
Country: Thailand

A young photographer Thun and his girlfriend Jane discover mysterious shadows in their photographs after fleeing the sceen of an accident. As they investigate the phenomenon, they find other photographs contain similar supernatural images, that Thun’s best friends are being haunted as well, and Jane discovers that her boyfriend has not told her everything. It soon becomes clear that you can not escape your past.