The Guardian

The Guardian-720P

The Guardian-480P

source: The Guardian

I hadn't heard about this 2021 Vietnamese movie titled "Thiên Than Ho Menh" (aka "The Guardian") from writers Kay Nguyen and Victor Vu prior to sitting down in 2023 to watch it. I stumbled upon the movie by random luck, and with it being an Asian horror movie that I hadn't seen, of course I opted to sit down and watch it. Well, half of it anyway. Running at 127 minutes, this movie was slow paced, boring and uneventful. I have to say that it was quite a struggle to sit through just more than an hour of virtually nothing happening. Well, nothing in terms of being a proper horror movie that is. If you want to watch a drama movie about pop singers laced with some supernatural folklore, then this is a movie for you. If you watch it for a horror movie, you're in for a sore disappointment. The storyline in the movie was just lacking drive and force. It took director Victor Vu forever to go nowhere. And I mean that literally. I gave up on watching the movie just after 1 hour into the ordeal. I just simply couldn't take more of the torment that is "Thiên Than Ho Menh", because nothing happened. The acting performances in the movie seemed good enough. However, I wasn't really buying into what was happening on the screen, given the mind-numbingly slow pace of the narrative, and the fact that the script had zero appeal or horror contents. I wasn't familiar with the cast ensemble in the movie. Visually then you're not in for any particular outstanding treat here. I have zero intentions of returning to waste yet another hour on this movie, because there was nothing to entertain me here. If you enjoy Asian horror movies, do yourself a favor and give "Thiên Than Ho Menh" a wide berth. My rating of "Thiên Than Ho Menh" lands on a three out of ten stars, and that is mostly based on the production value of the movie and the acting in general.

Sauce

Do you need to watch a whole film to know whether it is good or bad? Well, that depends on the film. Sometimes a well-made yet bad film will only reveal itself to me upon reflection after the end credits, this however, is clearly awful. Let's start with the opening scene, a woman unconvincingly committing suicide - I immediately found myself exclaiming "down the street, not across the road!", the lack of blood and consistency between shots just made it all the more unconvincing. In our next scene, we see a young woman singing possibly the worst lyrics I have ever seen, accompanied by an out-of-tune ukelele. That's really all I, or anybody else, needs to know.

If there is no ghost in this movie, the motives and murder tactics are too unreasonable and boring. There is no explanation for why they can kill. The murderer's plan is too idiotic, and it is also very abrupt to give up killing the heroine. In the end, everyone walks out in a row, which is also inexplicable.

Honestly I thought it's a boring horror movie until the twist in the end. Then I thought this is such a touching love story where everyone bond together to provide some justice for the poor gal. I love a good revenge tale. :) I'm still puzzled if it's the ghost or her hallucination at the end.

Can't say I've watched many Vietnamese movies but this one was pretty good. I took off one star for the victim-blaming although they seem to understand that it wasn't her fault they just couldn't fully commit to saying it wasnt during the confession ending.. poor girls were typical young girls chasing Fame get raped and try to hold it all together all the while they have the public and personal people taking Revenge and looking to tear em down. Minus the social issues the movie wqs legit and well done on all facets from sound to cinematography to special effects to acting. Bravo! Haters gonna hate when they don't grasp the big picture. Give us another one.

After the commercial hit that is Dream Eyes (2019) followed by a dreadful year of the rampant Covid-19 pandemic, Victor Vu finally returns to his roots with the third unofficial installment of his famous Scandal franchise title The Guardian (2021) with yet, another tale about superstitious in the Vietnamese show business to little success because this is no doubt the most run off the mill movie he ever makes. The writing of The Guardian down to its characters beat and development is just a weak rehash version of the first Scandal movie only with a bigger budget now and although the first Scandal movie was ridden with plot holes it still accomplished what it set out to be while The Guardian strength relies on how much you know this famous guest star singer or care about the V-pop genre, to begin with. The movie got some nice spooky moments that will scare off the general audience who looking for a cheap thrill so watch it with caution.