Three (2002)

Who payed the critics

An absolute waste of money

Ok... Let's be honest. It cannot be the best movie but is quite enjoyable. The movie has the potential to develop a great plot for future movies

The movie is made so realistic it has a lot of that WoW feeling at the right moments and never tooo over the top. the suspense is done so well and the emotion is felt. Very well put together with the music and all.

Three more stories told by emerging Asian directors.The Good Stor(ies): The Wheel-In a small Thai village, a theater troupe reenacting famous folklore tales finds a cursed puppet washed along their shore. When everyone who comes into contact with it suddenly experiences grave encounters, a local boy tries to find a way to end the curse. Overall this one was quite enjoyable with their being a lot to like here. The main part of this one is the fact that the atmosphere created with the puppets is pretty chilling, as their mannequin-like looks and highly-elaborate decorations make them gorgeous to look at with a sinister air beneath the facade, and that creates a really lasting impression here. That the back-story about the rival clans and curses brought along makes for quite a fun time here with this one really getting a chance to play that up with the different situations encountered throughout here, from ghostly executioners and general pains around the body to supernatural fires and possession that becomes quite creepy along the way. While this one does get a little confusing with all the slow-motion shots that tend to go on forever distorting the dialog to make it pretty tough to figure out what's going on in the later half, the atmosphere and pacing are more than enough to hold this up.The Bad Stor(ies): Memories-Awaking from a car accident, a woman with no memory tries to piece the puzzles of her identity back together while her husband seeks to find the reason of her strange disappearance. As more and more clues come together, they gradually realize the strange rationale for both situations. Frankly, the only thing really enjoyable here is the finale twist which manages to come off quite nicely and has a lot of great scares present here because of that. The main problem is the fact that these are so late into the segment that the rest of it being taken up with the strange mystery is just excruciating to get through. The low-key pace and drama-like feel of the situations don't help matters as barely anything happens beyond their friends questioning each other while she runs around trying to find the cause of her condition. None of this is really engrossing material nor built for generating scares, and as a whole this one is pretty weak.Going Home-Moving into an apartment complex, a man and his son try to get along with a reclusive neighbor who keeps his comatose wife in their apartment. When the son goes missing and the search leads him to the apartment, he finds a far more sinister reason behind the wife's condition. This one really could've been great and was certainly full of positive points here with the engrossing mystery and strange behavior setting up a really chilling set-piece later on when he comes barging in looking for his son, and that's when this one turns south by having the kidnapper really be more compassionate and caring rather than a sadistic captor which makes the rationale for holding him all the weirder. None of these scenes really drive up the horror atmosphere all that much by keeping this one so low-key and drama-based that it really doesn't offer many thrills here. That's also in keeping with the final half where the back-story is finally revealed which steers this one even further away from horror into a dark romance effort that doesn't do much for keeping this one all that scary. It's a real missed opportunity.Rated R: Graphic Violence, Language, Nudity and children-in-jeopardy.

This is a trilogy of horror tales, and only one out of three worked for me. The first one involves a man who cannot remember what has happened to his wife. Every time he goes to sleep he has different, disturbing dreams regarding her whereabouts. The story is very unstructured but has a decent ending. The second segment is not much better than the first. Puppets are the main feature and they can cause all sorts of mayhem due to curses from the original owners. Lots of screaming, but it bored me to death. The third film is by far the best one. A man moves in to a run down apartment complex with his young son. The only other tenant is a man taking care of his supposedly paralyzed wife in a wheelchair. Turns out that his spouse is actually dead and he is using Chinese herbs to bring her back to life. It is clever and original and it kept me interested to the finish. My advice is to fast forward past the first two segments and just watch the third.

At first I thought this was a actual sequel to the original and was excited to see it, and was disappointed to find out it really isn't actually a sequel and just titled it 3 Extremes 2 because it has three horror segments and it's better for marketing. At least from what I heard. The first two segments sucked, the first segments started out kinda creepy but it started to go in the cheap scare direction and nothing about this segment was memorable and the title of the first segment is "Memories". The second segment is the worst out of the three and really hated it, super boring as hell to watch and absolutely nothing about it was scary. The thought of creepy puppets being cursed may seem like a okay idea, but the direction and everything about this crap is boring. Seeing how the director screwed up for just a short segment, his other films must suck as well. I just really disliked this segment. The third segment is my favorite one in this film, and if the other segments was good as the last one I would have really enjoyed this movie. The plot is about a cop that moves to a apartment with his son, and the person living near them is a necrophiliac or seem like it. I liked how when you think one thing of what is actually going on, it changes to something else and keeps you guessing. I enjoyed this segment and if the other segments was good as this one I would have given this film a way higher score, but as a film itself overall I didn't like it because the first two segments sucked big time. Just do yourself a favor and skip to the last segment "Going Home".3.8/10

Three is an omnibus supernatural horror film comprised of three one-hour long mini-features. Each one was produced in a different country, Peter Chan representing Hong Kong, Kim Ji-Woon representing South Corea, and Nonzee Nimibtr representing Thailand.The opening film, Kim Ji-Woon's "Memories" follows two individuals as they grapple with seemingly missing memories: a man who's wife is missing and a woman who's trying to figure out who she is. The work actually foreshadows a lot of what will eventually show up in Kim's following feature, A Tale of Two Sisters, which I really liked. While the film does feature a number of eerie moments, it also suffers from a lack of a strong story. There's not much to its revelation and the characters are fairly static. To its merit, it's probably the most technically proficient of the three films and certainly the scariest.The second piece is Peter Chan's "Going Home" and this is probably the best overall of the bunch. While its production values are actually the roughest of the three, the story is probably the highlight of the three. The story is divided into two segments, the first where a cop and his son move into an aging complex where few people live and is seemingly haunted. The second, the cop grapples with a seemingly mad homeopathic doctor who is appearing to pursue the resurrection of his dead wife. The film grasps well its theme and the story has a few interesting revelations to provide while also having something to say about the power of love/hope.It's not a scary piece for the most part, but despite the production values, the direction appears sure and makes great use of its setting and limitations.The final film is Nimibtr's "Wheel", which is about an arts troupe grappling with the curse of an evil puppet. This is probably the weakest segment. While it does have some good imagery to offer, the story is confusing, aimless and the scares are without method or meaning. Some of the visuals are chilling, but because of the rather slapdash and sometimes illogical story, the overall effect of the piece is muted.All in all, I have to say that Three isn't a complete waste of time due to the solid piece by Peter Chan and the stylish opening act. On the other hand, it's weakened by the third piece and while the three do try to take on the same overall concept, they seem to be too divergent to really make a cohesive whole, with Nimibutr's "Wheel" really on a different plane than the other two. Probably better viewing for genre lovers of horror or supernatural films and perhaps for more curious cinephiles, but I don't see that it's going to be particularly impressive for anyone else. 6/10 for Memories, 8/10 for Going Home, 4/10 for Wheel. 6/10 overall.Note: The US release of this film changes the order of the films around so that it opens with Memories, then goes to Wheel and closes with Going Home. I'm not certain how the Hong Kong and Thai versions of the film orders the three; I watched the Corean version.