OK, this will take some time, so try to follow along. Hashimoto (Yosuke Eguchi) a rogue, crippled scientist (who really doesn’t like the word “cripple”), and his team have created the Menger Sponge out of human protein. This device can do just about everything, including suck in any type of energy, trap ghosts, allow the living to see the dead, and generate anti-gravity. However, the research is considered a failure because they’ve only been able to make microscopic versions. But Hashimoto has a trick up his sleeve, a single large scale Menger Sponge and an imprisoned boy-ghost. Hashimoto gets his government masters to give him one more chance as well as the aid of a special cop (Chen Chang), who has super-sight. The cop comes with substantial baggage as his mother is in a coma. For reasons that are pitch black but manage to become simply murky at the end, the team + cop study the dead boy and the nearly invisible strands of silk that allow him to stop people’s hearts and connects him to something much more dangerous.
This one is weird even for Asian horror. A science fiction, horror, espionage tale, Silk happily switches gears over and over, without any concern that the transmission has fallen out. There’s the usual long-haired female ghost that reaches out of a soup bowl, and then there’s a car chase and shootout. Sci-Fi technobabel mixes with government spy-speak, and both take a break for a treatise on the meaning of life. This is what psychedelic drugs were made for.
Silk was an expensive movie for Taiwan’s modest film industry, though the budget couldn’t cover the Scientology literature expenses on a Tom Cruise flick. It shows what people can do who aren’t used to insane amounts of dough. It’s a great looking film, with wonderful cinematography, superb acting, and solid, if not overwhelming special effects. If I was a producer in L.A., I fire the crews for my next ten extravaganzas and hire Silk‘s filmmakers to shoot all the movies for the price of one. Well, I’d do that as long as Silk‘s writer/director stuck with directing and kept his more esoteric ideas to himself.
While Silk functions well in most of its genres when considered separately, the whole is a cloud of meaningless giberish. This horror film attempts to supply a logical, rational, and scientific explanation for the supernatural and I can’t recall a film that makes less sense. I question if ghosts and cyclotrons should ever go together, but certainly not when there are also strands of love and hate. How do you measure a “hate strand”? And even with super-vision, can you really follow such a thread through the streets in a car? (I’m glad ghostly silk sticks to a traffic lane.)
Motivations are more troubling as is the bizarre way Silk defines the scientific community. The government apparently is set up like the mafia. The “Director,” who beats up his underlings when irritated, wants the physical Menger Sponge so he can publish a paper on it and become wealthy. Unless he’s just going to paperclip the object to a blank sheet of paper, I can’t imagine what good it will do him. He has no idea how it works or the concepts behind it. Plus, the antigravity team got a huge amount of press in flashbacks around the opening credits, so he can hardly claim it was all his idea. Hashimoto’s hot assistant (Barbie Hsu) must be on strong antidepressants, and they aren’t working. She is so incensed that the cop has joined their group, thinking that this will diffuse her credit (last time I heard Asian scientists work in teams with people from all over the world, just like all other scientists), that she attempts to steal the boy ghost by putting him in her pocket. Ummmm… There’s so many things wrong with that I can’t even list them. Then there’s Tung the cop, who has a mother fixation that isn’t only embarrassing, it’s boring. I can forgive a film for making no sense (though Silk is pushing it), but not for wasting time with tedious faux-drama.
Silk is never frightening, but the ghosts do provide a few creepy moments. Tung trying desperately to avoid a staring contest with the boy ghost is tense enough to get you looking for your blood pressure medicine. The film can’t retain that mood (or any mood), which makes this a good “scary picture” for your friends who can’t handle scary pictures. No one is going to get too scared from a movie that has a ghost slide out through the door of a car when it takes a tight turn.
Silk has a lot going for it, but it tries to be too much, and ends up not being enough of anything.