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Review

Ebola Syndrome – Movie Review

  • Directed by Herman Yau

Starring Anthony Wong and numerous other actors, whose names escape me and both IMDB as well as every other review I’ve read defy me to piece together. I apologize.

This film was quite the experience, as I don’t know that I’ve ever watched a Category III film before, which is the Hong Kong equivalent of an NC-17 film here in the States, but this was certainly a lot of sick, disturbing fun. I may struggle a bit with this review, as the interweb has completely failed to give me any sort of information about who played the various roles in the film, aside from Anthony Wong as the toxic (both figuratively and literally) character of Kai, the man at the core of all the problems and chaos in the film.

The frustration of not being able to identify the actors involved aside, the film is well worth a look if you have a strong enough stomach, so let’s get into it shall we?

Kai (Wong, duh) opens the film banging his Boss’ wife in Hong Kong, but when the Boss discovers them in flagrante, as it were and proceeds to beat the hell out of Kai, in a sequence meant to culminate in Kai’s castration. Kai begs him to let him complete the act himself, then in turn kills everyone in the room using the scissors he’s given and even the nearby table to beat on them for good measure. He is stopped just shy of setting the family’s young daughter on fire (!), having already doused her in gasoline, but is disturbed by a delivery man, so he makes a run for it before he’s caught and punished for his crimes.

Ten years later, Kai is living in Africa, where he has a new Boss (who the web identifies as Lo Meng, evidently a Shaw Brothers regular) who knows that he has something of a criminal past, and is thus able to keep him employed for peanuts, because what else is Kai going to do? Kai’s lot in life at the restaurant is worse than his gig back in Hong Kong, as the Boss’ wife Ling hates his guts and never misses a chance to snap at him or insult him, and the room Kai rents from them is within earshot of their bedroom, which leaves Kai listening to them screwing at night, just to make his life even more frustrating.

Lily, the grown up orphan from the first scene of the film turns up in Johannesburg as part of her stewardess gig, and when she’s in the restaurant Kai works in, she finds herself physically ill when he’s around. Never mind the fact that he looks exactly as she saw him 10 years earlier when he brutally killed her family, but whatever, she doesn’t recognize him, we need to keep the story moving along.

Kai and his Boss go on a quest for cheaper pork, which leads them to a remote village, where most of the villagers are obviously infected with a horrible disease, which they are in mid-ritual to try and cure. Note: chickens don’t fare well in this ritual. In spite of most of the locals swimming with disease, Kai and his Boss purchase several pigs from them for the restaurant and head back to town. The late afternoon elephant stampede distracts Kai, who wrecks their truck, then he and the Boss get into an argument and Kai stomps off into the brush, leaving the Boss to try and fix the truck.

Kai happens upon a native girl, who is obviously ill, and in keeping with his despicable character, he rapes her, only to have her die in the middle of the act. He heads back to the truck, and the Boss allows him to ride back with him. Kai begins to show signs of illness almost immediately, and after a doctor’s visit, the Boss is informed that Kai is the one in a million carrier of the Ebola virus who doesn’t die, rather, he’s slightly ill for a time, then lives to spread the wealth around.

By the time the Boss learns this, Kai has already cut his hand at work, bled into several customer’s dishes, sneezed on people, etc, and is well into the process of raping Ling in their home when the Boss arrives to tell him the bad news. The Boss is killed (rather vividly) in the ensuing struggle, Ling is raped and killed, because Kai is a single-minded kinda guy, and he disposes of their bodies by serving them up as the new menu item ËœAfrican Buns’ or some equally sketchy item that everyone of course digs into with gusto, further spreading the virus around.

Lily has begun to put the man who looks EXACTLY like the guy who killed her family together with the creepy guy she just saw at a restaurant by this time, and Kai absconds back to Hong Kong, living on the nest egg of his dead Boss’ fortune, which he kept squirreled away in his home. This allows for another Ebola Virus breakout in Hong Kong as the authorities scramble to find the source of the infection and things gets increasingly gross and splattery as the film goes on.

Wong is just downright hateful as Kai, there’s nothing redeeming about the character, which is an interesting film to make, in which the guy you spend the most time with is just a big, giant irredeemable asshole, but there you go. Kai hates everyone and begins to enjoy the toxic nature of his body once he realizes what’s going on, the situation pre-figures the spread of a certain disease (avoiding spoilers, folks) in Chuck Palahniuk’s book Rant: An Oral Biography of Buster Casey by many years, but I thought of it often as I watched the film, in that the main characters are both dangerous to all those around them and use it to their advantage.

The film never fails to be slightly gross or unpleasant, and even though there are loads of plotholes here, the obvious driving force is what disgusting thing can we show you/have Kai do next, and it’s an entertaining ride to say the least.

Not recommended for anyone with a weak stomach, but I think this is worth a look for fans of extreme cinema.

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About The Author

Kingmob

Kingmob has been spending his time writing online reviews for the better part of two years and has nothing but the ability to speak about himself in the 3rd person to show for it. This review and others like it can be found at Big Suck Loser and you can read about the daily minutiae that drives him slowly mad and informs his useless opinions of pop culture at his blog, Dear Bastards.

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Article Information

  • Posted: Tuesday, July 14th, 2009
  • Author: Kingmob
  • Filed Under: Film, Review
Tags: , , , , , ,

Comments

One Response to “Ebola Syndrome – Movie Review”
  1. Nekrosoma Nekrosoma says:

    This is great and extremely sick film indeed. Sometimes you think you’ve seen it all and then comes Ebola Syndrome and slaps you in the face, shaking your senses.
    And Kai is most repulsive character ever on film, what an ugly sociopath.

    July 19, 2009 at 6:21 pm

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