Ab-normal Beauty

Heavy on the colour filters, whizz-bang editing and full-on soundtrack, the characteristic Pang Brothers style (‘Bangkok Dangerous’, ‘The Eye’) just about holds this uneven Hong Kong shocker together. There are distant echoes of ‘Peeping Tom’ in the first hour, as art student Jiney (Rosanne Wong) photographs the bloody aftermath of a car crash and becomes increasingly obsessed with capturing the precise moment of death, much to the consternation of her girlfriend Jas (Race Wong, her real-life sister). As the direction revels in the red-bathed imagery of the darkroom, Jiney gets a disturbing glint in her eye, yet after an hour the movie seems to tire of that idea and wheels on a leather-hooded psycho who assaults his female prey on camera and sends Jiney the evidence. The remainder is increasingly perfunctory, leaving the artful visuals and strong lead performances unable to dispel the queasy notion that we’re lingering too long over shots of young women being beaten to a pulp.