A couple mourning the sudden death of their sick young son pay a visit to a spirit medium who “re-incarnates” the soul of their son into a rag doll, much to the protest of the husband.
The wife begins to act increasingly unstable, effecting the husband until he submits to the will of the ragdoll as well. But could there be something more sinister at play here?
It’s always really interesting when well-known actors and directors create movies that are so inherently bad, it makes you wonder what possessed (nice pun) them to do it in the first place.
Director Danny Pang, well known for Bangkok Dangerous and The Eye trilogy amongst other blockbuster Hong Kong hits, has decided to remake his 2022 Malaysian made but only released in Japan flop Reborn, with a bigger budget but with the added bonus of the typical Chinese horror movie censorship.
This means [SPOILER]: everyone is suffering a mental illness and the spirit medium is arrested at the end of the movie for being a fake.
Eddie Cheung, known for massive movies like Election, Exiled, The G/P/Z Storm movies, countless TV series from the late 90s and the latest Louis Koo flick Behind The Shadows (which I watched last night incidentally), must be doing this as a favour to Danny Pang, or he owes some gangsters money and this is part of his humiliation ritual.
His wife in the film, played by Venus Wong, is also no stranger to audiences starring in recent blockbusters The Dumpling Queen (this is good!) and Beyond The Sin (haven’t watch it yet). Strangely, both have worked with Louis Koo recently. Perhaps he was the mastermind here? Venus’ performance in this movie is so over the top, that the only way it could have been worse is if the Mandarin voice dubbing was wildly unsuitable. Guess what? They did that here too.
Then we have veteran Helena Law who should have said no as soon as they told her she would be cast as a blind spirit medium who was going to be arrested. The funny thing is, why hasn’t her character been arrested prior to the incident in this film? Is this film really about her getting arrested instead of the couple?
Ha, I wish.
This is Chinese horror movie dreck at it’s worst. Which is odd, because exactly 10 years ago Danny Pang directed The Strange House, and to this day I will still claim it is one of the Top 5 Chinese horror movies ever made.
Oh, how the mighty have fallen.
I don’t know how bad the 2022 original of this movie is, but if this is a so-called improvement, then that must be an utter disaster.
GENRE Chinese Horror Thiller
DIRECTOR Danny Pang
STARRING Eddie Cheung, Venus Wong, Helena Law
ORIGINAL TITLE 致命玩偶
ALTERNATIVE TITLE Deadly Doll
A REMAKE OF Reborn (2022, Malaysia)
COUNTRY OF ORIGIN China
RELEASE DATE 29 May 2025
Less a doll fan, more an Arty Dans fan though.
Less a doll fan, more an Arty Dans fan though.