Having shared credit for The Eye and its sequel, Hong Kong directors the Pang twins went solo - Danny with Leave Me Alone, and Oxide with Ab-Normal Beauty, a brutal and impressive psychological horror. Witness to a car crash, art student Jiney (Race Wong) cannot restrain herself from photographing a corpse at the scene. Before long, an all-out obsession with death develops. Searing visuals and insane amounts of tension smooth out the plot's bumpy ride to the predictably nasty consequences.

It is characteristically stylish with complex compositions, drenched with neon greens and blood red, and perfectly matched by a jarring and jolting ambient score. It's also undeniably enlivened by its mildly fetishistic mix of lesbian schoolgirls, polythene, chains, voyeurism and violence. Look past the pyrotechnics, though, and two stories jostle uncomfortably together where one might have thrived.

"TEASING AND TERRIFYING"

The edgy first hour is an intriguing and atmospheric glimpse at internal world of Jiney, and her hallucinatory deterioration into ever darker states of mind. Teasing and terrifying, Pang manipulates the viewer brilliantly through these segments, but seems to fumble the set up of the second plot, the appearance of a serial killer linked "mysteriously" to Jiney. The switch to straight horror is wasteful of the careful set-up, but fright fans will forgive this in return for the gleefully nasty, nerve-shedding finale.

In Cantonese with English subtitles.