paul_haakonsen

Of course I had never heard about this 2023 Malaysian horror comedy named "Pontianak 100 kg" (aka "100 kg Vampire"). But given my love of Asian cinema and horror movies, of course I needed no persuasion to check out what writer and director Shuhaimi Lua had to offer.

I have to admit that I had problems getting submerged into the narrative. There was just something about the storyline that didn't work for me, and I started to zone out and pay less attention to what was going on throughout the course of the movie. It was a mixture of an inadequate storyline and one-dimensional characters that didn't really work for me. So writer (and director) Shuhaimi Lua failed to deliver something that catered to my preference in movies.

Given my limited exposure to the Malaysian cinema, then I wasn't familiar with the cast ensemble in the movie. I will say, though, that the acting performances in the movie were fair.

The special effects in the movie were exactly that; special. I mean, they were so lousy cheap that you can't help but laugh, especially at the plastic prosthetic fingertips and long nails that the vampire was wearing. You could see it was just something she wore as it didn't fully adhere closely around the fingers.

"Pontianak 100 kg" failed to entertain me, and it is not a movie that will ever grace my screen a second time. Nor is it a movie that I would recommend to fans of the Asian cinema.

My rating of writer and director Shuhaimi Lua's 2023 horror comedy "Pontianak 100 kg" lands on a three out of ten stars.

Now, had I known that the 2024 movie "You Shall Not Sleep Tonight" was a horror anthology, I might have skipped on it. Yeah, horror anthologies are usually not worth the time of day, as most of them are questionable affairs.

And was "You Shall Not Sleep Tonight" any different? Well, I wasn't particularly entertained, especially since some of the stories were hardly even horror. As with all horror anthologies, the segments were of various contents and various entertainment value. It was the narrative segment, the one that was told in between the segments, that was actually the one with the most horror elements to it, and it was carrying the same title as the movie. Other than that one, then "The Last Seance" was noteworthy, whereas the rest, yeah, don't bother.

I will say that the acting performances in each segment were good. I wasn't familiar with a single actor or actress on the cast list, which was actually something that spoke well in favor of "You Shall Not Sleep Tonight", as I enjoy watching new and unfamiliar talents on the screen.

"You Shall Not Sleep Tonight" was watchable, but it was nothing outstanding, not even for a horror anthology. It is not, however, watchable a second time, as it was a bit of a struggle to get through the first time. And let's just be honest here, the segments weren't capable of sustaining more than a single viewing.

In honesty, it is the production value and the acting performances of this anthology that sort of kept the ordeal afloat.

My rating of "You Shall Not Sleep Tonight" lands on a generous four out of ten stars.