By Simon Thompson
Writer/director Benjamin Wong’s Ba is a movie that I could broadly categorise as being a combination of both James O’Barr’s The Crow and Alan Ball’s Six Feet Under- and even then that still wouldn’t be doing its unique tone justice. Wong is a skilled visual stylist who manages to turn alienating run down city landscapes into intimidatingly surreal stylised nightmares, through clever lighting and having most of the movie’s key scenes taking place at night. Where the film falls slightly flat, however, is Wong’s tendency to fall a little bit too much into a sentimentality that can sometimes come across as slightly grating.
The plot of Ba, follows Daniel (Lawrence Kao), a poverty stricken single father whose situation is so desperate he’s been forced to live in his car. Taking care of his young daughter Collette (Kai Cech) and trying to shield her from the worst of their predicament, Daniel is suckered into becoming the Grim Reaper by a malevolent supernatural force preying upon his financial desperation. Realising that accepting being the reaper is the only way out for him and his daughter, Daniel is forced to leave Collette alone for long periods of time, leading her to become increasingly suspicious of her dad’s activities.
The chemistry between Kao and Cech makes the father-daughter dynamic completely believable, with Kao’s performance, in particular, really highlighting the abject circumstances his character is going through. In contrast to most child actors being like nails on a chalkboard, for the most part Kai Cech, gives an unexpectedly polished and naturalistic performance for a thirteen year old because she plays it as subtly as possible. The supporting cast are also pretty solid, with the appearance of Michael Paul Chan (aka Judge Ping from Arrested Development and Mr Lee from Falling Down) bringing a smile to my face because it’s always nice to see a solid and reliable character actor getting work.
The cinematography by Tom Campbell and Mingjue Hu is beautiful to look at. Campbell and Hu’s contrast use of a warm colour palette for the various daytime sequences which suddenly changes at night into a flurry of shadows and neon creates a striking effect that is, frankly, this movie’s main selling point. Given that Ba probably didn’t have a huge budget to work with, the special effects are top notch and also, to Wong’s credit as a director, sparingly used so that they don’t become a substitute for a narrative.
Overall, Ba is a visually interesting and unconventional horror movie that is let down by its tendency towards mawkish sentimentality. While the movie’s pacing leaves a lot to be desired, there is a strange quality to Ba that makes it both so interesting yet so frustrating at the same time, to the extent that it’s at least worth a cursory glance to see whether you enjoy it or not.
Ba is now available to stream on digital platforms.
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