The Strange House is a 2015 Chinese horror film about a young woman pretending to be the deceased granddaughter of an ailing grandmother.
Directed by Danny Pang (The Mirror; The Child’s Eye; The Messengers; The Eye and sequels; Bangkok Dangerous; et al) from a screenplay co-written with Pang-Chun Chan, Yongqin Li and Ho-Wah Wong. the movie stars Eddie Cheung, Yi Song, Zitian Tian and Jiao Xu.
Plot:
A young woman pretends to be the deceased granddaughter of an ailing grandmother who is about to celebrate her birthday. The aged woman does not know her granddaughter has died; thinking she has only left, and the young lady, with her remarkable resemblance, is asked by the family to accompany the grandmother in her last days; posing as her granddaughter in order to cheer her up.
The young woman suddenly experiences horrific visions of the dead granddaughter, and her life is threatened when the rest of the family suddenly conspires to kill her. Now in danger, she seeks the truth about the dead girl, while slowly succumbing to insanity as illusion and reality merge…
Reviews:
“After an interesting and fairly unsettling start, and despite nicely ambiguous performances from Xu Jiao and Cheung Siu Fai, The Strange House quickly devolves into the usual broth of jump scares, belabored exposition […] and censorship placating […] the film does add a clever narrative and visual footnote to this twist as if to compensate for how derivative and contrived it is.” Asian Film Strike
“Even in a ridiculous plot that looks like Mexican soap opera, there is a scene that shows that Danny Pang has not lost the ability to create good moments of tension with ghosts, but unfortunately it is just one scene. The film’s development is cliché and the twist is not surprising at all, it’s the same as a film by his brother Oxide Pang (Diary).” Eldan Juan Vicente
Cast and characters:
Eddie Cheung … Le Zijun (as Siu-Fai Cheung)
Yi Song … Nana
Zitian Tian … Antie
Jiao Xu … Yezi
Original titles:
通灵之六世古宅 “The Ancient House of the Sixth World of the Psychic”
通靈 “Psychic”
