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Mavis (Josie Ho), an American journalist in Hong Kong, does a report on
a radioshow called Horror Hotline, in which the audience is
encouraged to call in spooky encounters. A man called Chris phones in and
tells them about a big head baby he and 6 of his schoolmates discovered in
a shed about 30 years ago. Rather on a whim, Mavis decides to investigate,
and is helped by Horror Hotline's cynical producer Ben (Francis
Ng). The soon meet the principal of the school Chris has gone to all these
years ago, but he's in a state of catatonia, as if he had seen something
that has scared him shitless. His daughter Connie (Michelle Zhang) though
tells them that he was recently visited by 7 men, one of them Chris - so
the others must have been his schoolmates, right? Wrong, it now turns
out Chris's six schoolmates have committed suicide at an abandoned factory
not long after the incident with the big head baby. Then one of Mavis's
crewmembers goes missing, and Mavis and Ben eventually track him down to
exactly the abandoned factory Chris's schoolmates have killed themselves
in. They only find him dead though, and a weird picture of a big head baby
painted in blood on the wall behind him ... Now Mavis and Ben know they
must do everything to uncover the mystery, but a visit to the hospital
where the big head baby was born only brings up more mystery while an
attempt to use a psychic to find out what has happened at the abandoned
factory ends in the death of the psychic. They also find out that Chris
has actually died three years ago ... Ultimately, they get in touch with
Sam (Sam Lee), the only person who has seen the big head baby and survived
to tell the tale. But when he leads them to the location where he has seen
the baby, it turns out to be nothing but a death trap ... At
times, this film is pretty impressive, positively creepy, shocking, gory,
it's well-filmed and well-directed - it's just not a very good film.
Basically, the script has a few too many flaws for the movie to wholly
succeed: Firstly, the plot simply lacks an initial reason for Mavis and
Ben to investigate the story of the big head baby (at least not until the
first death, which happens quite a bit into the film). Secondly the whole
story structure is pretty confusing, so it's at times rather difficult to
follow the lead characters' investigations while narrative tension is
never properly built up. And finally, while all the characters remain
disappointingly flat throughout, they are involved in numerous subplots
noone really cares about. Plus, it's also more than a bit of a
disappointment that we never get to see the big head baby itself (probably
due to budgetary reasons). Now you know, such a tactic works in films like
Rosemary's Baby, which is about a whole lot more than just the
titular baby, but this film exrpressly is about a big head baby no matter
how you put it, and all the investigations are circling around it, so just
not showing the thing is a bit of a letdown. All that said, the film is
still watchable, even good at times, but by no means does it ever come
close to being a great film.
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find Horror Hotline... Big Head Monster at adultvideouniverse.com
