DVD The Midnight After

Unambiguously SciFi and/or supernatural, Fruit Chan's latest offer, ironically, is less surreal than many of his earlier works. "Red Van" is a "screenplay based on material from another media" (for those who must have Hollywood jargon), an Internet novel, to be precise. What director Chan did was to take the template of the plot (which is quite familiar, as a matter of fact) and populated it with statements on the current political environment of the Hong Kong SAR (not the lethal disease, but Special Administrative Region, of the PRC). With the anything-goes plot and the assortment of characters as weird as he fancies, Chan has complete free rein to do whatever he wants, and the only limit is his imagination. With his previous works, director Chan has demonstrated that imagination is not something he lacks. Still, there are some borrowed inspirations – by sheer coincidence, I watched the DVD of "Murder on the Orient Express" just a couple of days before I saw "The midnight after". If you have seen both, you know what I mean.

Seventeen people in a public passenger transportation van coming out of a tunnel after midnight find that the world as they know is no longer. No, this is not about post-nuke devastation – the places are all intact. It is the people who are gone (a little bit like Stephen King's "The Langoliers" but not the same), except for some "masked people". From here on, as I mentioned, it's everything goes.

The interesting cast should be well hailed: international star Simon Yam, local favoruite Lam Suet, teen idol Janice Man, old time "Shine" duet Chiu Tien-you and Wong You-nam, hottest local sort of "Step Up 3" discovery Cherry Ngan (wonderful in "The way we dance"), Fruit Chan's "picked up from curbside" discovery from his acclaimed debut "Made in Hong Kong" Sam Lee, iconic and talented Vincci Cheuk who shocked Hong Kong's broadcasting world nearly (but not quite) two decades ago as the youngest (something like 16) DJ with an immensely successful show, and veteran Kara Hui who won best actress in the first ever Hong Kong Film Awards in 1982.

By all indications, this movie is going to be among all time local favourites.