Three Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		4.0
Overall		3.5

Three Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman October 21, 2025

Note: This film is available on Blu-ray as part of Three / Three... Extremes from Arrow Video.

Fans of world cinema who also have an interest in what might called "seasonal" spooky fare for the impending Halloween festivities are probably well acquainted with subgenres like so-called J-Horror and/or K-Horror productions, but Arrow is offering fans a sextet of stories across two discs that might be more broadly identified as A-Horror, i.e., Asian Horror. Three was released in 2002 and offered an interesting portmanteau structure which showed off the efforts of three different directors, one from Thailand, one from Hong Kong and one from South Korea. Somewhat hilariously but not all that unusually in the annals of what might be broadly termed A-horror, the original film only came out in the United States after a sequel, 2004's Three. . .Extremes, was released stateside successfully, and then only with the malaprop title Three. . .Extremes II. One way or the other, the second film offered another trio of directors, albeit this time with a Japanese director (the legendary Takashi Miike) taking the place of one from Thailand (while still offering the same "nationality", the Hong Kong and South Korean directors in each property are different). As with any portmanteau, some of the vignettes may resonate more strongly than others with any given viewer(s), but taken together they offer a frequently viscerally palpable mood of unease, and they also can tend to kind of both exploit and maybe even deconstruct preconceived notions about what various "national" horror idioms tend to provide. As usual, Arrow has aggregated some appealing supplements that should also be appreciated by genre enthusiasts.

Three gets underway with a moody if somewhat predictable South Korean entry called Memories which features two "lost" characters, a husband (Jeong Bo-seok) and wife (Kim Hye-soo). The man is seemingly lost due to memory issues, and the woman is absolutely lost, waking up on an isolated road and seemingly invisible to everyone with whom she comes into contact. Next up is a probably less rote entry from Thailand called The Wheel, a title which may inevitably bring to mind certain Buddhist iconography, with an emphasis on implied karma running through a tale which rather fascinatingly revolves around a popular Thai folk entertainment involving puppets called Hun la korn lek. The last vignette is Hong Kong's Going Home, which perhaps ironically may be closest to a J-Horror ambience with its tale of a single father (Eric Tsang) who moves into a ramshackle apartment house with his young son Cheung (Li Ting-Fung) where there are only ostensibly a couple of other (living?) tenants around. Cheung finds a potentially spectral "playmate", while Dad discovers those other tenants may have a few surprises of their own.

Three Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Three is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Arrow Video with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.85:1. Arrow's insert booklet for the set understandably combines its information about both films' transfers on one page:

Three and Three. . .Extremes have been restored by Arrow Films and are presented in their original aspect ratio of 1.85:1 with 5.1 and stereo audio.

The original 35mm camera negatives were scanned in 4K by WE Distribution. Picture restoration and color grading were completed by Heavenly Movie Corp.

Audio restoration on the audio mixes for Three. . .Extremes was completed by Bad Princess Productions. All materials were provided by WE Distribution.

I frankly wish there were a bit more information on the shoots of all three segments, since they display rather radically different appearances. Both Memories and Going Home have a thick, gritty look that can sometimes mask fine detail levels, especially in some of the darker scenes which tend to prevail in Memories in particular. Memories also has some long swaths which have been graded toward a kind of cobalt blue, which may also tend to slightly defeat fine detail levels at times. Of the three, I personally found The Wheel to have the most consistently appealing detail levels and palette reproduction, perhaps due at least in part to several rather evocative outdoor scenes capturing atavistic Thai life, something that is inherently not on tap for the nightmarish scenario of Memories, especially a lot of the interior scenes, and the similarly shrouded interior apartment scenes that are the bulk of Going Home.

Three Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The glut of audio specs above boils down to one LPCM 2.0 track and one DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track, with the languages reflecting the national origins of each vignette. There are some appropriately spooky sound effects and scoring that are noticeably more immersive in the surround tracks, and isolated startle effects are arguably more effective in the 5.1 iteration as well. Dialogue is rendered cleanly and clearly throughout. Optional English subtitles are available.

Three Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Cross-Pollination Horror Part 1 (HD; 20:26) is a new interview with Peter Ho-Sun Chan, the film's producer and director of the Going Home segment. Part 2 is on the other disc in this set.


• Recalling Memories (HD; 14:27) is a new interview with Kim Jee-woon, director of the Memories segment. Subtitled in English.


• Making Memories (HD; 6:22) is a new interview with Hong Kyoung-pyo, Director of Photography of the Memories segment. Subtitled in English.


• Terror Without Borders (HD; 23:34) is described as a "newly edited" interview with Peter Ho-Sun Chan, done by Frederic Ambroisine in 2005.


• Taste, Taboo and Truth (HD; 11:50) features Eugenia Yuan, star of the Going Home segment, in another newly edited interview culled from a 2004 Ambroisine session.


• Peter Ho-Sun Chan: Cinema Without Borders (HD; 31:01) is an archival interview with the producer and director.


• Kim Jee-woon: Memories from Beyond the Grave (HD; 16:01) is another archival interview. Subtitled in English.


• Making of Featurette (HD; 15:32)


• Trailer (HD; 3:05)

Consult the Three / Three... Extremes Blu-ray review for more information on non supplements.

Three Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

The mood is palpable from the get go with this trio, though the opening story is probably the most predictable of the bunch. Technical merits are generally solid, though at times pretty widely variable in overall appearance, and the supplements are very appealing. Recommended.