Diary (2006)

Absolutely Fantastic

n my opinion it was a great movie with some interesting elements, even though having some plot holes and the ending probably was just too messy and crammed together, but still fun to watch and not your casual movie that is similar to all other ones.

This is ultimately a movie about the very bad things that can happen when we don't address our unease, when we just try to brush it off, whether that's to fit in or to preserve our self-image.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Winnie Leung spends her days in her apartment making wooden dolls, cooking and writing in her diary. She is very lonely since her ex boyfriend, Seth Lau, left her. She doesn't have much success trying to contact him, and one day, after going to his job to see if she sees him, she meets Ray Fan, a guy who is very similar to Seth. Winnie decides to invite Ray Fan to her apartment to have a meal, and there, she tells him how similar to her ex boyfriend he is, and tells Ray that Seth died in a car accident. Eventually Ray and Winnie starts to date and live together, but never looking a real couple, since Ray doesn't show much love towards her. One night, when they both are having dinner, Winnie says that Seth died of cancer, making Ray feel confused and have a discussion with her. To prove she is right, Winnie starts to read her diary in the day that Seth died, but she discovers a bizarre and dark secret that will change everything.''Mon seung '' is a very nice movie, that makes you feel very surprised with the end. The movie starts being slow and a little boring, and then, after Winnie reads her diary, everything turns upside down, showing not only a different behavior from the characters, but also things that you would never imagine about them.I didn't like very much the story not being linear, because in some parts I felt a little lost, needing to watch them again to understand what was happening or if it was a present, a future or a past act.Ps: In the beginning of the movie, you really can feel Winnie's solitude and eventually have pity for her.

Sometimes when you're being derivative good things transpire, and that in itself can deliver a more shocking revelation than all the cheesy FX and predictable chillers put together.This is what happens with The Diary, a foray once more into the Pang Brothers breech with their entourage of Thai filmmakers and knack for intelligent gore. After the disappointing Recycle set the prolific siblings back a bit, it's pleasant to see them back in moderately satisfying form with a short yet titillating release timed nicely for the Halloween season.On the surface, The Diary seems like it's bound for also-ran perdition, hinting just a slight too much at working that tired old The Eye magic one time too many. Even its main star, Charlene Choi, puts on a spectacular Angelica Lee imitation to the point where at the onset of proceedings wary viewers will be tempted to give up and call it a write off.Do not: perseverance here is a bona fide virtue, and The Diary has going for it more than meets, well, the eye. Ironically, those very fears of this effort descending into a realm of rip-off fiascoes save it from a fate worse than celluloid death. As soon as one thinks they've seen it before, which they have in many ways, The Diary comes charging through to twist those well-worn elements and throw our own jaded sights right back at us.Choi dabbles in some of her best acting yet as disturbed Winnie (Leung Wing Ni we believe in the original Cantonese), a lone young woman trapped in a bizarrely old-fashioned dwelling full of marionettes and assorted memories. She has a diary going on, although it's not as imperative to events as the title suggests. Instead, this film revolves around perceptions, memories and knowing what's real. The prime horror here aren't ghosts, devils or monsters, but the worst enemy a person could ever have: their own mind.Winnie struggles with sadness and guilt over the parting of her boyfriend Seth, until meeting another man whom she believes to look remarkably like the flame lost. However, this entanglement soon also takes on sinister undertones. The man, Ray, offers scant solace and never truly feels to Winnie the way a significant other should. Wonder why. Ray's done by Shawn Yue, an excellent performer in his own right and worthy successor to sensitive-manly icons a la Chow Yun Fat and Di Long. Yue deploys his full range of down-to-earth but superlative tricks to help immerse us in the story, making up for The Diary's obvious genre associations and further highlighting serious acting going on here.Another boon comes from Isabella Leung (accidentally credited as Isabbela), doing Winnie's friend and sounding board, although, much like Ray, she too never really behaves the way you'd expect from someone who cares.The trio move around The Diary's reality, or lack thereof, with a pervasive sense of malaise, affecting the movie's delectable mood of diseased uncertainty. We must again mention their surprising and impressive work as seen here, something to write about, home or otherwise. They're not usually considered part of the annual awards posse, and so it's quite gratifying to behold the potent characterizations rendered so eloquently for the benefit of audiences willing to look past pop-star prejudices.Coupled with dozens of genuinely puzzling moments and several startling devices, they add up to a promising product that's by far the best Pang Bros outing since The Eye itself wowed us over four years ago.Despite its reasonable IIB rating, The Diary fields some gore and more than that beckons with the suggestion of things terrible lurking in the background. Its staunch refusal to commit to specifics such as time and place defy the desire to put it in neat brackets. There's dated entries from the diary Winnie keeps, but those eventually turn out to mean next to nothing in themselves. As for geography, the close-cropped cinematography denies the broad vistas needed for reassurances, as visuals deny audiences the comfort of knowing where and why anecdotes unfold. All we see are basically glimpses or brief vignettes of apartments, markets and office buildings. There's very little context, an important tool in establishing surrealism. However, this could conceivably have something to do with the Pangs maybe trying to pass the mainland off for HK due to cost cutting. Another mystery, apparently.Its short runtime alludes to The Diary's potential as a chapter in a Three Extremes-esquire project, as does Winnie with her penchant for "cookery". But just when it could have bowed out on a note of unresolved malice, its makers run away and close with extra scenes consisting of resolution we could have done better without.Even so, and despite lacking the brute force of a mind blower, The Diary has enough pseudo-horror intelligence and winding twists to be enjoyable. It likely won't stand the test of time in the long run, but nonetheless does something to inject more life into a thread of movie-making beset with settling for average and using one pasty-faced protagonist too many.For those on the prowl and looking to sink gnashing teeth into something fun and dark at the same time, The Diary comes recommended.

This is a masterpiece from the Peng Brothers.I will not categorize it into horror genre. I'm totally mesmerized! I mean totally! Charlene Choi's acting is impeccable! I just couldn't believe my eyes that this young actress could deliver us such a sophisticated and troubled psycho! It is said that people kill because they fear. When people get hurt, they torture. They torture others, and themselves, piece by piece, until they can't tell themselves from others! Look at those horror movies now playing in theaters like the gory Saw 3, you will understand how pathetic it is for the Hollywood. For a very long time rarely has Hollywood any original idea to produce an real horror movie. Cutting open eyeball things and soaking in blood are all they can think about.They need to make another adaptation. Mark my words.

Man. What a mind-boggling movie! And what horror. The horror... well, the movie does fall under the horror-movie genre... but the horror comes not from just the audio/visual effects of the movie, but the realisation of what a mind is capable of! The movie revolves the troubled mind of a talented but secluded girl, Winnie, who can't get over the loss of her boyfriend (through break up, car accident, cancer, or...?). Her hobbies are making wooden puppets/dolls and writing in her diary. She confides and seeks comfort with a friend, Yvonne, who gives her advice, like getting even with her boyfriend who dumps her, or getting a new boyfriend to get over the ex one... Soon, Winnie runs into a guy, Ray, who resembles her ex-boyfriend, Seth.Things seem to go well for a while... at least so it records in Winnie's diary... Ray and Winnie live and eat together. But then Ray starts to change and Winnie still feels that Seth is in the house with them. Confusion and suspicion arise. Winnie starts to accuse Ray of change of heart. In an effort to confront Ray of calling her a liar (because she is unable to maintain consistency in her own story-telling), she shows Ray the diary. But only ends up confronting her own ghosts of the past. Sudden realisation overwhelms her and she remembers everything in a flash. In her sheer anger, she kills Ray. Yvonne appears in the nick of time to advise Winnie on how to dispose the body...(Spoiler starts here) Police is called in when the neighbours smell something "fishy" in the corridor. Winnie claims that Yvonne is the mastermind, who instigates her on the killing. She even leads the police into believing that she may have murdered a guy called Seth 2 years ago. When Yvonne is hauled in to ID Winnie, only then the truth is revealed.... The whole time when "Winnie" lives in her world, she takes on the appearance, image and persona of "Yvonne". And Ray, though remotely resembles Seth, is seen as "Seth" in her own world. She sees and hears nothing and no one else. She writes in her diary, only to reinforce the world she has created in her mind and to script everything that is going to happen, because her diary dates as far ahead as in 2007. Meanwhile, the "Yvonne" that keeps appearing in her house, is no one but a life-size wooden doll that she has carved. And all the conversations she has with "Yvonne" and "Seth"/"Ray" are just pure imaginary dialogues. And the real Yvonne and Seth have been her schoolmate and ex-boyfriend respectively. Both end up as husband and wife. Audience by now realise that the very thing that drives Winnie to depression and madness is the betrayal of friendship and love/trust.