The mystically bizarre horror film Silk (Guisi, 2006) asks us to believe in unlikely powers of something called the "menger sponge."

Like the tesseract or the kline bottle for an earlier generation of science fiction writers, the menger sponge first described by mathematician Karl Menger is just odd enough that hardly anyone who isn't a super math whizz will have even the vaguest notion what in the world means this universal fractal curve.

Since the menger sponge is "real" topological homeomorphic science guaranteed to bewilder the average joe or jane, it's the perfect bullshitty science-thingy to cite if you're writing a script that requires the capture & restraint of ghosts.

Gimpy goth nutsack Hashimoto (Yosuke Eguchi) is the main investigator among the scientific researchers who have captured a ghost-boy in a haunted room of a Taiwan building. A liquiscent spray of microscopic menger sponges permits researchers to observe ghosts. All exits from the room have been coated with this spray so that the ghost cannot escape.

Ghosts in turn hold the key to the use of menger sponges as anti-gravity devices, which is why the team has captured one.

Tung (Chen Chang) is a cop with a photographic memory & possibly psychic abilities whom Hashimoto wants on his team of psychic investigators. Tung's mother is in a coma & isn't liable ever to wake up. He's grieving for her loss, though in theory she's still alive, & he won't let the doctor's pull the plug.

The mystery about to unfold will lead him to another comatose woman, he will be very easily caught up emotionally in the events. And he just may be the only member of the investigative team who's not stark raving mad.

Su (Barbie Hsu) is a rather strange lab worker who hates that an outsider like Tung was let into the project. She tries to "steal" the ghost-child by first spraying it with menger sponges. But a malevolent power comes forth in a strand of silk & kills Su, in a spectacularly eerie pseudo-science fiction event that's really quite impressive.

The fiction notion of this otherworldly silk will in a later scene provide one of the eeriest events of the film, as a single slim strand is tracked through the city.

As part of the experiment the team lets the ghost-boy loose to see where he will go. He walks unseen by the general public to a particular bus, reliving the everyday activities he experienced when he was alive.

He finds his way to a special education school & sits in his empty class, busying himself at some imaginary studies. He then strolls out of the class & leaps from a balcony, reenacting his death.

His broken body repairs itself & he continues his idle journey. The film has presented quite an amazing mystery, but can it really lead anywhere? Generally such unusual scenarios are more easily posited than resolved, but Silk, still has a few surprising ingredients in store.

The boy's apparent suicide will turn out not to have been what it seemed. He may well have been killed by Chun, his mother, who has herself lain comatose for years. When she dies, she becomes a totally peculiar swift ghost running on all fours. Why? Because it makes a cool cinematic image, no other reason.

This ghost-mom sets out with intent to kill the members of the investigative team for having tortured the ghost of her dead son.

While building to the climax Tung sprays the menger sponges on bullets for a high powered rifle so he can kill ghosts. Fortunately the film never quite descends to a ghost-shooting video game style movie, as might easily have happened; events remain story-driven even as the levels of peculiarity are heaped on.

Hashimoto has at long last ocked the power of the child-ghost in a menger sponge, but the ghost-mother's malevolence cannot be stopped until her child is freed from the sponge. Hashimoto's suicidal proclivity combines with his corrupting desire for power, as he resolves enough of the riddle of these events to begin to defy gravity. He intends to die in the center of a radiation grid which will empower his ghost.

If any of this sounds surreal, it most certainly is that. Silk develops an awfully original mythology of the afterlife quite different from the usual. It uses some hoary images like the scary pale girl-ghost seen in so many Asian horror films, but reinvigorates even the cliches with novel contexts.

copyright © by Paghat the Ratgirl