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8.12.2008

tim chiou in eduardo sanchez's seventh moon


This one's for horror movie fans... Check out the trailer for Seventh Moon over on Twitch. It's a rather frightening looking film from Eduardo Sanchez, one of the guys behind The Blair Witch Project. It stars Amy Smart and Tim Chiou (playing a Chinese American dude named Yul), as an American couple on their honeymoon in China. The short version: they get terrorized by ghosts. The long version:
Seventh Moon opens with Melissa (Amy Smart, STARSHIP TROOPERS, BUTTERFLY EFFECT, MIRRORS) and Yul (Tim Chiou) enjoying the first days of their Honeymoon on vacation in China. Yul is an American of Chinese descent, but only has a marginal grasp of the language and culture. He convinced Melissa, however, to forego the tropics for a more adventurous honeymoon: a guided tour of China during the Seventh Moon ghost festival. By the looks on their faces, they made the right choice. Good food, good shopping and a fantastic celebration of Chinese culture replete with music, dancing, drinking and elaborate parades and ceremonial offerings. If you look beyond their happy faces to the corners of the frame, however, you notice that perhaps the Americans are not as welcome as they feel. They are a bit too loud and tipsy for what is clearly a sacred event. Disrespect at a shrine ends in angry glances. An inappropriate loud joke results in a harsh barking rebuke. The tone of unease is subtle but undeniable.

Intoxicated and exhausted, the newlyweds climb into their chartered taxi and drift off to sleep en route to Yul's grandmother's house in rural Axian. When they awake, their driver has abandoned them in the middle of nowhere and very strange stirrings are audible in the fields near the road.
Some interesting things about this project... Sure, it revolves around stupid mystical Chinese occult stuff, because, you know, ghosts are scarier when they're Asian. But I kind of like the idea of these Ugly Americans getting what's coming to them, even if it is at the hands of fake-ass ghosts. And dude, one of the protagonists is an Asian American man! That's different.

View the trailer here. The movie will premiere at Fantastic Fest in Austin in September. More on the movie at the Seventh Moon website.