Rating summary

Movie		2.5
Video		3.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		1.5
Overall		3.0

Re-Cycle Blu-ray Movie Review

“You dumped us here. You discarded us.”

Reviewed by Casey Broadwater July 24, 2009

While the recent fallout from the Asian horror boom has been radioactive—don’t put me near One Missed Call 2—the initial explosion of titles familiarized Western viewers with a whole new set of terror tropes. Harkening back to 1964’s Kwaidan, both Ringu and Juon introduced international audiences to the longhaired and vengeful female ghost. The lush claustrophobia of A Tale of Two Sisters added a dark, psychological element, and films like Pulse gave us cause to fear the spiritual unknowns of new technology. Whereas domestic horror films of the time were bloated with action and filled with too-clean teenage faces, J- horror—and its Korean and Chinese cousins—dwelt in an atmosphere of lingering dread. When the Pang brothers made The Eye back in 2002, however, the movement was beginning to lose some of its luster. By the time the remakes and sequels started rolling out, all those terrifying new tropes started to look tired and cliché. Ah, a spooky little girl with long black hair! Oh no, this text message says I’m gonna die! In 2006, the Pang brothers joined creative forces again for Re-Cycle, an aptly-named horror/fantasy hybrid that tries commendably to make something new out of the well-worn staples of its genre, but ultimately only cobbles from a number of better films.

No, this is not a still from The Eye.

The Pang brothers re-team with The Eye star Angelica Lee, here playing Ting-Yin, a successful writer who has turned a failed real-life relationship into a trilogy of best-selling romance novels. At a press conference, she reveals her next book will deal with the supernatural, claiming that she wants “to experience true terror that wells up from the depths of the heart.” She gets her wish, naturally, when she begins to sense a strange presence in her apartment. The film’s first act plays out as a standard Asian ghost tale. Ting-Yin finds long black hairs around her home—always near water sources—gets unnerving, hiss-heavy phone calls, and spots a dark apparition darting behind her shower doors. Some of the moments are jolting and effective, but they’re nothing we haven’t seen before, relying on out of focus faces, sudden movements in peripheral vision and, of course, some audio-induced jump scares.

The Pangs switch it up a bit, however, when Ting-Yin realizes that these supernatural events are directly related to a few lines from her novel that she crumpled up and threw in the trash bin. After a frightening encounter with an old woman and her granddaughter in an elevator, Ting-Yin steps out of her apartment building and into a parallel universe, where discarded thoughts, objects, and people are consigned to waste away for eternity. It’s a kind of purgatory for the forgotten, and during its second half, Re-Cycle becomes a Chinese version of Dante’s Inferno, with Ting-Yin traveling through this abandoned underworld with the help of a Virgil-like character she names Ting-Yu (Yaqi Zeng), a small girl of questionable origin. The first “level” of this particular hell is an evocative, deserted city with perilous staircases—think M.C. Escher meets Jean Pierre Juenet’s City of Lost Children—and it only gets stranger from there. Along the way, we encounter a wasteland of junked children’s toys, a forest of suicide victims, a valley of neglected ancestors and, I kid you not, a womb-like tunnel bedecked with bloody, aborted fetuses. This isn’t an anti-abortion film, though, and Re-Cycle’s message —and it does have a message—is that we should be mindful of what we have, and more considerate of the things that we casually toss aside and forget.

While I applaud the Pang brothers for their willingness to try something new, Re-Cycle doesn’t really work as a horror or fantasy film. The ghouls and zombies of the underworld suffer from the law of diminishing returns—the more we see them, the less frightening they are—and despite swarming threateningly around the main characters, the creatures never even get a chance to bare their teeth. There’s really no sense of menace in the film at all, no impetus for Ting-Yin to get the hell out of Dodge, so to speak, and Re-Cycle starts to rely a little too heavily on an unearned emotional connection between the two Tings. The fantastical elements too, while sometimes interesting visually, don’t really offer anything new, reminding me alternately of The Cell, Silent Hill, and What Dreams May Come, but not nearly as fleshed-out as any of them. Though it’s imaginative at times and tries hard to re- invigorate its genre and defy expectations, Re-Cycle unfortunately never comes full circle.

Re-Cycle Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Sometimes stunning, frequently underwhelming, and occasionally puzzling, Re-Cycle's 1080p, AVC-encoded transfer is difficult to judge. Color is a major part of the film, but it's used inconsistently and frequently to ill effect. Each section of Re-Cycle's abandoned world has a different color cast—from the sickly greens of the bridge sequence, to the vivid reds of the forgotten womb—and the directors have claimed they wanted the locales to feel like "levels" of a video game. They certainly make their point, but the selective saturation and desaturation often looks amateurish and hokey, like those cheesy wedding portraits where the bouquet is in color but the rest of the image is black and white. (My apologies to anyone who has one of those—it was a fad for awhile.) Skin tones, then, are literally all over the color map, sometimes flush with warmth and other times pulled back into a deathly pallor. Black levels are wildly inconsistent, usually veering into a washed-out, charcoal look, I noticed a few instances of contrast wavering, and the image in general is flat and lacks pop. On the plus side, facial details and clothing textures look sharp and I didn't notice any edge enhancement, compression artifacts, banding, or blocking.

Re-Cycle Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

In contrast to the video quality, Re-Cycle's DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track is consistent and engaging. While it may not provide the non-stop shocks, thrills, and stabs of other, more sound- centric horror films, Re-Cycle has its share of clever audio design. Loud footsteps thud from left to right, creepy metallic scrapings sound off in the rears, and the sound field is filled with strange creaks and unnatural swooshes. Dynamics too are solid. The opening piano score incorporates clear, high-end tinkling keys with deep, coherent bass notes that fill out the bottom. Orchestral strings reverberate over the low throbbings of an LFE pulse, and sound effects are crisp and directional. While vocal work is mostly clear and intelligible, I noticed that the lines of Ting-Yin's ex-boyfriend seemed mostly—if not entirely—dubbed in post-production. Whether this was a language issue—perhaps he was speaking Mandarin, while the rest of the cast used Cantonese—or for some other reason, I'm not sure, but it's worth noting.

Re-Cycle Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

The Making of Re-Cycle (SD, 15:41)

This behind-the-scenes featurette, which includes interviews with the Pang brothers and star Angelica Lee, examines the CGI and sets, but spends most of its running time in discussion about the film's thematic content. The documentary isn't put together very well, though, several bits of interviews are used more than once, and the initial intro sequence is re-played several times for some odd reason.

Deleted Scenes (SD, 8:42)

These aren't so much whole scenes, but rather little clips that were cut from the film. The only one of real interest is the last, which is set in a stunning golden forest with photographs lodged between the leaves of trees.

CG Renderings: Before and After (SD, 1:34)

This brief segment shows some of the green screen work compared with the finished film.

Cast and Crew Q&A Session (SD, 8:25)

This interview was conducted after a screening of the film, and features Angelica Lee and the Pang brothers fielding questions from the audience. There's nothing too interesting here, but the directors do talk a little about the film's somewhat scattershot use of color. Apparently, they intended the film to come across as a series of "levels," almost like a video game, each with its own tonal feeling.

Gala Premiere, Interviews and Celebration Party (SD, 16:13)

Like the previous segment, there's not much substance to this footage, and the two presenters seem way too overenthusiastic about the film, even making the cast and crew look bewildered at times. There aren't really any interviews here, just isolated questions. Was it difficult to act against a green screen? What was your biggest difficulty making this movie? What do you hope audiences will take away from the film? It's fairly fluffy stuff, and I didn't really find it worth watching.

Theatrical Trailer (SD, 1:30)

Re-Cycle Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

If you're looking for a scare, turn your attentions elsewhere, as Re-Cycle never really brings the goods. It's an imaginative ride—it would make a great attraction at some hypothetical anti- Disney—but it has a serious lack of tension and motivation. This one's for hardcore Asian horror fans only.