Hollow

A woman jumps off a bridge and a young girl drowns in the same river. A week later the young girl's corpse is found and magically reanimated. She of course is possessed and things start going bump at night and even the day. The director tries to use the horror genre to show us the underbelly of prostitution and human trafficking in Vietnam and is all over the place. When you add people throwing up dirty river water, you are confused if there is a comedy element involved here too. A sad letdown from the director who gave us Journey from the Fall.

Rating: * +

Journey from the Fall

1975, the Communist have taken over Vietnam and the people are fleeing its shores. Long (Long Nguyen) unable to see his country suffer, convinces his family to escape to the US and stays behind to find for the Nationalists. But rather than finding freedom for his country he ends up in a re-education camp. His struggle for survival is juxtaposed beautifully with what his family go through on the ocean to freedom. As the film winds around it just shows that in war, freedom is usually just a point of view and hope sometimes is a dangerous but powerful thing.

Rating: * * *