An upcoming horror film titled Legally Declared Dead is said to be scarier than the typical ghost films we’ve seen. The movie had gained 7 millions HKD and is one of the most successful Hong Kong films released since the pandemic outbreak.
Critics have also praised the portrayal of characters by actors Anthony Wong and Karena Lam. A viewer said this about Anthony, “Just his gaze was enough to send shivers down the spine and made the whole film extremely eerie."
Based on the Japanese horror novel The Black House, the film directed and produced by Kim-Wai Yuen follows the tale of an insurance agent, Yip Wing-shun (Carlos Tan). He was supposed to meet up Tak (Anthony Wong) to follow up on the family’s insurance policy.
However, he found the corpse of Tak (Anthony Wong) and Ling (Karena Lam)’s son hanging over him when he arrived.
Yip decided to lead his own investigation of the case under suspicion but the task gets more dangerous for himself and his closed ones the deeper he dived into the mystery. His kind nature was also used against him by the real perpetrator.
Karena Lam plays the character named Shum Chi-ling and explained the process to get into her character.
"It took some time to build up the external elements of the character of Shum Chi-ling. For instance, the poor vision of her left eye, limb dysfunction, weight gain, white hair, application of alcohol before makeup to exhibit poor skin condition, and so on to create the more accurate personality of the character from the inside,” she said.
Carlos was also suited to play as an insurance agent because he used to one as well.
"Director Yuen asked my opinions on insurance while we were discussing Legally Declare Dead. I told him frankly that insurance has indeed helped a lot of people most of the time especially when they were in financial crisis. Then he told me that the character of Yip Wing-shun is very suitable for me since we both share similar perceptive on insurance,” he explained.
Legally Declare Dead will be released in Malaysia on August 20.
