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Out of the blue, Nancy (Charlene Choi), a stubborn young woman in
constant need for money, is called to visit her father, whom she never
actually met before ... but once at her father's place, she learns that
the old man has actually just died - but she also meets her 6 siblings of
whom she did not know, and has to realize to her shock that one of them is
Jerry (Kenny Kwan), her former lover ...
Good news is father was phenomenally rich and wants to leave all his
money to his 7 children he had with different mothers, bad news is they
have to spend one week in daddy's castle and burn incense every midnight
in order to be entitled to inherit father's fortune - and what's
especially bad about that is that daddy's castle is a bit spooky, and
after a while, Andy, the eldest of the siblings, has hallucinations and
throws himself to his death, while Deon and Ben (Steven Cheung) just
disappear - which is doubly tragic since Deon has left behind a little
girl, Fanny.
Ultimately, Nancy decides to give the castle a thorough look-over - but
ends up all tied up and hanging down a rope by her arms. Her brothers and
sisters do not fare much better, they all end up in caves - together with
Ben and Deon, who have been kept here a little longer, and the villain of
the picture - who turns out to be daddy's lawyer Cheung (Alex Fong), who
is also brother Sam, the black sheep of the family - feeds all the male
family members with hallucinogens that are supposed to drive them mad. But
the plan fails when little Fanny - whom Cheung/Sam has forgotten to lock
up - gets hold of the cage's keys and frees the brothers and sisters ...
and in a comical showdown, they finally defeat their evil brother and it
all ends in a group hug ...
The plot of this film is nothing more than a 1930's style old dark
house story slightly updated to fit in with the Canto-popstars - Twins
(= Charlene Choi, Gillian Chung), Boy'z (= Stephen Cheung, Kenny Kwan) and
Alex Fong - and infused with a little bit of humour, especially in the
finale (though old dark house stories of the 1930's also tended to feature
at least a bit of humour) ... and that all said, the film is a total
failure. The main problem is, it completely lacks atmosphere, there is
nothing creepy even about the more macabre aspects of the proceedings and
the castle itself - a perfect backdrop for creepiness - is badly
underused. And the finale is nothing more than action comedy with no
horror in sight. Another problem is the film features way too many
characters that totally lack individual character traits, even Charlene
Choi's character, which is supposed to be the protagonist, remains
compartively flat and one fails to care for her or anyone else. Plus, the
comedy in this film isn't really all that good ...
So to sum it up, no, I did not like this film.
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