3.5/5 stars

While the tragicomic tale of midlife crisis in Rob N Roll represented a welcome change of pace from the plain silly offerings typical of this time of the year, Hit N Fun tells a bittersweet and at times almost philosophical story that again feels like it is striving to separate itself from all those Lunar New Year comedies.

When high-flying advertising executive Elsa (Louise Wong Dan-nei) first meets washed-up actress Carrie (Gigi Leung Wing-kei) at an audition for a menopause product commercial, the two don’t exactly start off on the right foot.

Rating: 7.5/10

Spoilers ahead for “Presence”.

The ghost haunting trope: one of the most — if not the most — stereotypical horror tropes to have ever become popularized.

Given how stereotypical it is, it might even be tempting to argue such a trope is irrelevant in our modern age of convoluted psychological thrillers, weird vampire sex movies and disturbing body horror.

On one hand, you’d be right to have that argument; ghost hauntings are just not good material for films that are meant to be scary.

On the other hand, there’s always a lot of artistic value that can be gained from subverting a traditional trope for an ulterior purpose, and that’s exactly what “Presence” does best. Although it doesn’t exactly deliver on the traditional horror or thriller that you’d expect, the perspective “Presence” takes on this traditional trope is intriguing and — for all its faults — uniquely innovative.

The main feature — or gimmick, depending on how you look at it — of “Presence” is its unique cinematography. The film is shot from the first-person perspective of the ghost, spirit, presence or whatever the hell it is that’s haunting the house in the movie. Although it does run the risk of becoming gimmicky at times, the shot does much more to help the film than it does to hurt it.

There are times when the special shot is touching, giving us insight into a unique character arc that involves a sort of posthumous redemption for one of the main characters. Then there are also times when you just have to laugh because it’s so obvious that the creators of the film are self-aware of how weird it is to film from the first-person perspective of a ghost. 

For example, there’s one scene where the main character and her boyfriend are undressing together, so the ghost starts destroying her closet to stop them from having sex. It’s things like this that make the new shot perspective unique and funny without being obtrusive or ruining your enjoyment of the movie.

However, the new shot does come with one absolutely huge issue: It is tasked with carrying the entire movie.

There are a lot of problems with this film. The dialogue is some of the worst I’ve ever witnessed, almost all the characters are completely insufferable, and — although the plot has some interesting existential themes — it is fairly stereotypical and forgettable.

Even so, there are times when “Presence” comes remarkably close to finding solid footing in its own right. The relationship between the father and daughter in the film is touching, and there are a few scenes that seem relatively realistic, dialogue-wise. But then you’ll just have a random subplot opened up about tax fraud that’s never followed up on. Also, why the hell do you need to have a subplot about tax fraud in a thriller movie in the first place?

It’s difficult to fault anyone in particular for some of these issues; it is a ghost haunting movie after all. Still, the burden is on studios to produce good films, and they just aren’t nailing a lot of the fundamentals here.

This is why it’s so difficult to accurately judge “Presence”. Although it does have a lot of issues that would have me throw out almost any other film, the unique style taken by the movie almost demands a watch. It’s at least nice to see something innovative in the industry from time to time, and this movie is certainly a leader in that department.

So, I think as my final verdict, I’ll have to say this: Go watch it, but don’t expect greatness; instead, expect a unique and innovative film with plenty of its own faults. It’s not perfect, but it’s different. And sometimes, that’s enough.

Kaleb Blizzard is a philosophy sophomore and opinion writer for The Battalion.

A still from ‘Dìdi’
| Photo Credit: Focus Features/YouTube

It is the stuff of horrors, mostly, to look back at your teenage years. Not just reminisce over the carefree days but really look at the awkward growing pains. Sean Wang’s semi-autobiographical film Dìdi is a similarly unflinching and jarringly specific teenage snapshot capturing the final years of the aughts.

Set in 2008 Fremont, California — a city defined by its proximity to Silicon Valley — Dìdi is quick and eager to throw us into the deep end of early social media. 14-year-old Chris Wang (Izaac Wang) rapidly switches from one tab to the next on his computer as he pores through YouTube videos and replies to messages on AOL. Later, we see him in his basement, through the hazy lens of a camcorder, recording amateur skateboarding tricks. Sean Wang directs his film within the vast confines of the burgeoning internet age, as Chris and his friends “poke” each other on Facebook and learn about their crushes’ interests through Myspace pages.

In his script Sean Wang, whose documentary short Nǎi Nai & Wài Pó was nominated at the 96^th Academy Awards, balances the universality of a life marked by social media with the unique circumstances faced by a Taiwanese-American teenager. Chris steals his sister’s band T-shirts to impress his crush, sneaks out to a party and then samples a cigarette to fit in with his older friends. When around his friends, he is boisterous, careless, and a menace. At home, Chris is weighed down by the absence of his father, while he deals with his grandmother (Chang Li Hua), and a quiet but concerned mother (Joan Chen). At home, he is not the Wang-Wang who carries a dead squirrel in the backpack to show his friends, but instead “dìdi” as his mother and grandmother call him, which translates to “little brother” in Mandarin.

Wang punctuates the eruptions in teenage boys with quiet inward contemplations. When Chris sees his mother using a knife and fork at McDonald’s, he chides her by saying, “You’re so Asian”. Later in the film, we see him leave behind his school friends to go film skateboarding tricks with some older kids, to whom he lies and claims that he is only “half-Asian”. The script, which at times may feel like Sean Wang has filled in with his own personal diary entries, doesn’t concern itself with picking through Chris’ individual problems. To him, all this seems like a jumbled mess that he can’t make sense of. So, when the script in a similar fashion is seamless in its chaos, Dìdi emerges to be a standout coming-of-age film.

The film is underscored by Izaac Wang and Joan Chen’s performance who take turns to individually anchor the script’s pathos. Joan Chen plays Chungsing Wang, a reserved painter, as a caring but cheeky mom, whose scenes with Chris embody a range of emotions.

In Dìdi, Sean Wang pulls from his memory, and from the public memory, the experience of being a teenager in 2008. It is a tightly shot, intimate, yet sweeping affair that conjures personal memories.

Dìdi is available for streaming on JioCinema