If it's the end of another week, then it must be time to pop a couple of cold ones and review yet another Hong Kong ghost movie. This time out, it's the 2002 release Possessed. Like many similar pictures, this film offers up a few decent scenes, but ultimately, its' low budget and derivative nature make this just another stunningly average release in the overcrowded genre.

The movie tells the story of James and Minako (Julian Cheung and Ozawa Maju), a former couple who host a show about the supernatural. After a young man named Lee (Sam Lee) kills his family while seemingly being possessed by a ghost, a minister, Henry (Tse Kwan-Ho), is called in to perform an exorcism. The story becomes tabloid fodder, and so James contacts Henry to perform an on-air exorcism in order to boost his show's sagging ratings. The exorcism is successful, but it soon becomes apparent that the ghost hasn't left the earthly world yet and is looking for new victims.

Possessed's director, Billy Chung, has been working in Hong Kong films for twenty years, but has never found much success, instead finding himself regulated to B-level low-budget fodder. That's not to say that his output is bad, but it's nothing all that great, either. Taking a look at his filmography over at the Hong Kong Movie Database reminded me that I have indeed seen a lot of Chung's movies, but damn it if I can really remember anything specific about them. Now, that may be due to years of Jagermeister shots percolating in my brain. However, I would purport that it's more due to the fact that Chung's filmography is total middle-of-the-road material.

In that sense, Possessed falls right in line with Billy Chung's other work. The story does hold a little interest, the acting is generally good, and there are a couple of scenes that are genuinely creepy. But, overall, anyone who's watched more than a couple of ghost movies (no matter where they were produced) has most likely seen this sort of thing done before, and done better. As slow weekday night viewing fodder through the magic of instant Netflix, Possessed is decent enough for what it is, but really in no way is this a release that worth putting in any major effort to check out.

RATING: 5