Three / Three...Extremes

The two anthologies that make up Three and Three… Extremes twist the horror genre into something that  feels more existential than supernatural…although there are plenty of lost souls floating around too.  Each short (three in each, hence the title) finds its director taking on a cinematic dare: how beautiful and grotesque can things be at the same time? Jumping from Japan to Korea to Thailand to Hong Kong, Asian horror goes places Hollywood fears to tread and these six films are a fascinating tour into unfamiliar territory.    

Three (2002) starts off quietly with Kim Jee-woon’s Memories, turning marital amnesia into something like a fuzzy purgatory of guilt, regret and sorrow…with a little murder thrown in for good measure. Nonzee Nimibutr’s The Wheel fits comfortably in folk horror territory, mixing cursed puppets, jealousy and greed for the most rural outsider of the bunch. But things get urban again in Peter Chan’s Going Home, a melancholy ghost-mad scientist story (yep, you read that right) that’s less about scares than the ache of final separation.

Two years later, Three… Extremes (2004) feels like the same concept injected with amphetamines. Fruit Chan’s Dumplings is the showstopper, a slow, queasy spiral into body horror that feels perversely elegant and decidedly offensive in every way. Park Chan-wook’s Cut is a sadistic pop art, morality play staged like a home invasion nightmare. While Takashi Miike’s Box floats above logic entirely, a whispery dream about incest, jealousy and regret lost in a snowy landscape. Together, they form a sort of anti-anthology: three films that contradict one another but somehow play in the same key.

Three feels more like an intriguing sketchbook, fun exercises in filmmaking to try out new techniques and ideas. It’s moody, uneven, occasionally stiff (especially Wheel) but always visually self-assured. Three… Extremes is the natural evolution of that idea: sharper, meaner, and more assured. Dumplings alone justifies the project, but Park’s and Miike’s entries give it strange balance: cruelty, guilt, and the poetic decay of beauty. If Three asks what scares us, Three… Extremes asks what we’re willing to look at.

Arrow's set is packed with extras in every nook and cranny, but it begins and ends with a new 2K restoration for both features.  New interviews with the directors, cinematographers and stars of each segment are spread across both discs with archival sit-downs and Making Ofs tacked on as well.