Review by Steven M. Duarte
This month’s recommended Foreign Fears Feature is the Taiwanese ghost film Silk. The Asian market is cluttered with vengeful pale face ghost films which makes it all the more important for a director to work that much harder to make their film unique. Director Chao-Bin Su does a good job of blending scares and moral values into his ghost story. Silk involves paranormal experts who have spent majority of their lives trying to capture a ghost. They finally capture the ghost of a small boy inside an old rundown apartment building. They find that the boy continues acting out his life as if he were still alive. There is one problem with the paranormal team investigating this boy; he dislikes being stared at directly. Starring at the boy leads to a violent sudden death at the ghostly hands of the boy. The team soon learns that there are much greater forces involving the boy than they could have bargained for.
While the film can feel a little like an episode of the X files, I still found the film entertaining and fun to watch. The characters are likeable and the film does a good job of portraying human emotion. If you would like a break from the usual vengeful spirit films that are abundant from Asia, give Silk a try for a different take on a ghost story.
--Steven M. Duarte
