(Spoilers.) The differences in perspective are sometimes amazing. When we first considered e-buying this DVD years ago, back when one still bought DVDs on e-bay, we looked the movie up online and stumbled upon Variety's review from 2002, which says: "Beneath its cheesy title, there lurks one of the most inventive Hong Kong psycho-thrillers of recent years in Horror Hotline … Big Head Monster, one of the very few to come close to replicating the clammy chills of late '90s Japanese pics like The Ring (trailer)." Okay, it only took us about another ten years to finally get around to popping the DVD — Mandarin or Cantonese language, English subtitles — into our player, but: Wow! One can only wonder with what the filmmakers bribed Variety's author back then to get him to write such misleading bullshit.
Horror Hotline … Big Head Monster is a truly terrible film, the kind that is so awful and (as its title indicates) cheesy that you can enjoy it as being terrible, but not as thrilling, surprising, chilling, inventive, or anything else that might tip director Soi Cheang's first horror film* (but third feature-length project) into being watchable as a "good" movie. Seriously, the movie is pure rǔshān: predictable, frightless, boring, disjointed, illogical, and even dull on occasion. It says something when poorly translated subtitles truly improve what is transpiring on the screen.
* He directed three more horror films in quick succession: New Blood / Hayn huet ching nin (2002/ trailer), The Death Curse / Goo chak sam fong fong (2003 / trailer) and Home Sweet Home / Gwai muk (2005 / trailer). After having watched Horror Hotline … Big Head Monster, we will not be looking for them.
Trailer to
Horror Hotline ... Big Head Baby:
Amazingly enough, despite the utter ridiculousness of most of the movie, it is presented with no humor – for that, it does engender guffaws and groans and giggles, and is impossible to take seriously. Opening with some guy named Sam (Sam Lee of Nude Fear / Jui hung 20 nin [1998], Bio-Zombie / Sang faa sau see [1998 / trailer] and tons of other stuff) who, playing paintball, suddenly starts hunting something he assumes is an "illegal" — more than once the movie shows some obvious disdain for outsiders — but, instead, ends up at dilapidated cement shack where he is confronted by the big head baby in a cage (we often see that cage, but never the big head baby — and a faceless, long-haired woman wearing what looks like a red cocktail dress. Then we meet Helen the Nurse (the beautiful Niki Chow of The Cursed / You er yuan [2018 / trailer], New Blood / Hyn huet ching nin [2002 / trailer] and Suspect / Chao yi shen tan [2024 / trailer]), who has an obviously dysfunctional relationship with radio producer Ben (Francis Ng of Devil Hunters [1989], The Bride with White Hair I [1993] & The Bride with White Hair II [1993 / trailer], Full Alert / Go do gaai bei (1997 / trailer] and so much more) and, unbeknownst to Ben, recently aborted the child he didn't know was inside her.* A film crew from the US, led by Mavis (Josie Ho of Habit [2021 / trailer], The Twins Effect [2002], The Apostles / Gui zhen [2013 / trailer], and Dream Home / Wai dor lei ah yat ho [2010 / trailer]), shows up to do a report on his popular radio show, Horror Hotline, where people call up to share their "true" ghost stories. When some guy named Chris calls up to share his experience with the Big Head Baby, and when Mavis decides to do some follow-up investigations on the story, strange and terrible things start to happen — including the disappearance (and death) of her cameraman, Mike (an uncredited Michael Clements of The Twins Effect [2003] and Naked Weapon [2002])...
* You would think that has something to do with the plot and the big head baby. It doesn't. All it does is allow her to kick Ben in the emotional balls when she finally decides it's time to break up and move on.
Niki Chow sings Moonlight,
from her album Pure Niki (2005):
Although Horror Hotline … Big Head Monster generally follows a normal visual structure of edited continuity, the movie often presents events as seen through the film camera of one of the characters, so the movie occasionally displays the characteristics of a found-footage movie. Arguably, the filmmakers are paying homage to the found-footage genre, which had just taken off at the time thanks to the original Blair Witch Project (1999 / trailer). Unluckily, the general effect comes across less as an artistic decision on part of the filmmakers that a desperate attempt to solve some budgetary problems. A bit more effective, even as it garners guffaws, is the not-so-oblique CGI (?) reference to the baby-in-space found in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968 / trailer), this time round with a big-headed baby.
The movie simply makes no sense. Chris, for example, is actually dead, so why does he even call up and pique their investigative interest if they shouldn't investigate? The baby, when born, is taken away in a cage by Men in Black — are we seriously to believe they then just put the cage in an easily accessible derelict building, close to a school full of nosy kids, and forgot about it? And if they did forget about the big head baby, who brings the big bowl of rice that is always in front of the cage? And why is the mother, who died at childbirth, faceless and floating around in a bloody flowered cocktail dress (instead of, say, a bloody hospital gown). What does Sam have to do with the entire story, and why does he survive and others don't? Is the evil baby immune to all religions, or only Islam? Where does Ben disappear to at the end? And… and… and…
Ah, hell. Just believe it: Horror Hotline … Big Head Monster is an incoherent mess that makes about as much sense as the blathering of Trump at his recent press conferences — but, to give credit where credit is due, is at least a bit more interesting and convincing. There is one effectively chilling scene in which Mavis "hears" the horrifying birth of the baby, but one good scene cannot save a movie.
Lastly, while the DVD that we have looks official, we have to assume – actually: we hope – we were suckered into buying a bootleg, otherwise we really cannot explain the suck-ass quality of the transfer: pixelated, the colors blah, and images blurry. Truth told, however, the lousy transfer quality Horror Hotline … Big Head Monster somehow complimented the lousy film itself, which is one of the kind of movies that you should only watch in a group with a lot of beer and weed, otherwise you might find yourself getting angry. Were the film an English-language film, it would surely gain fame as a so-bad-it's-fun movie, but being a Hong Kong product it shall probably forever remain a fringe displeasure, like "fragrant meat".
As an extra, the DVD offers two endings: the original one, and an alternative one. Neither offers a decent, satisfying resolution, as they both are relatively incoherent and aggravatingly open-ended. Like the film itself, and MAGA Republicans, both endings suck.
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