Studio: Arrow Video
Release Date: 10/21/2025
Rating: R
Film GradesThree:
- Memories: C
- The Wheel: C-
- Going Home: B+
Three. . .Extremes:
- Dumplings: B+
- Cut: C+
- Box: C
The Stories: Three: Memories features a man experiencing troubling visions about his missing wife, while she awakens on a street without her memory. The Wheel focuses on the fate of a puppet master’s puppets after his death. Going Home follows a policeman as he moves into a crumbling apartment building just a month before it’s about to be torn down. One of the other tenants is a man taking care of his ailing wife. Their paths are about to cross in an unexpected way.
Three. . . Extremes: Dumplings serves a story of an actress losing her beauty to time and the choices she’ll make to regain her youth. Cut centers around a movie director put in an unthinkable position by someone he took for granted. Box weaves a tale about family, jealousy, and a writer’s lonely life, one filled with imagination, regret, and shame.
My Take: Anthologies and horror just go together. Much like good short story collections, they can quickly get to the point, themes can be widely varied, and different tastes can be met by the assorted styles. Combine this with the Asian filmmakers involved in this double-film set, and you have the cinematic equivalent of a Chinese dinner buffet. While all of the dishes may not satisfy every customer, everyone is bound to find something that they really like and they’ve had a chance to sample something unusual.
OK, that’s an admittedly cheesy analogy for this collection but it fits, even if it seemingly diminishes the artsy approach taken by the six short films. When Applause Pictures came up with the idea for the movie and its sequel, their goal was to present a showcase of how varied Asian cinema can be. To that end, they enlisted directors from South Korea, Thailand, Hong Kong, and Japan. They succeeded in this regard, since each short film has its own distinct look, feel, story, and sets of themes, creating a sampler plate of what they have to offer.
ThreeAll the segments in Three deal with family bonds but in very different ways.
We start off with Memories, a puzzle of a movie that weaves the story of a woman whose memory loss has left her stranded, and her husband, who’s distressed over her absence. His worry has caused him to suffer from disturbing delusions and a debilitating sense of dread that something has gone horribly wrong.
The segment starts with a slow, but creepy tone as the husband has the first of his unsettling visions. The story soon flips to his wife, who awakens on a street with no idea of where she is or how she got there. We go back and forth between the two as she tries to make her way home following little clues and slowly recollecting her past, while the husband tries to hold together his life without her.
The ending is unsatisfying and feels too conventional for the mysterious setup. That said, the visionary sequences are well done, keeping the viewer engaged as the story unfolds. If only there were more of them or if those elements the resonated more deeply with the plot, this could have been better than average.
Next up is The Wheel. This may be the most culturally-focused of all, with a tale set in the past centered on a divide between two kinds of entertainers. Puppeteers are revered for their craft in both creation and performance, entrancing audiences with tales of old. Dancers tell the same stories, but they’re not held in the same esteem as the puppet masters, and considered to be of a lower class.
Combining that jealousy with a powerful curse should be a solid basis for an intriguing story, but it’s presented as a simple morality tale where people are warned not to do something, do it anyway, and dire results follow. While costumes, sets, and puppet designs are intricate, characters are one dimensional and the plot lacks depth, leaving the viewer unengaged. As traditional as the story is, it also feels like one that could have come right out of an old EC comic book, the difference being that those stories hit fast and hard and usually feature some ironic twist. In comparison, this feels both bloated and shallow.
Going Home is the most involving and complex of all these tales with varied characters filling out a story that turns from ordinary to bizarre. We meet Wai, the father and his son, Cheung, as they move into their new apartment. New meaning new to them; the building itself is old, dilapidated, and scheduled to be demolished in another month. The manager explains that the only other remaining residents live across the way, with that father spending all of his time taking care of his wife, who is paralyzed from the waist down.
Young Cheung is wary of their new home, too scared to even venture down the hall to use the communal bathroom. Additionally, he’s creeped out by the young girl across from them, but eventually she convinces him to play. Once he goes missing, the story really starts going and Wai uncovers something he never could have expected. I thought I had it all figured out at that point, but wasn’t even close.
It’s at this point that the story gets deeper and more involving by adding a weird but romantic element that drives to a conclusion that’s both fascinating and fitting. Like The Wheel, the story also involves ancient traditions, but here they’re pitted against the modern West.
The segment is helped by the excellent performances. The two children are adorably innocent, while the two main leads have their own strengths and foibles and both being played true to their characters, with one revealing an unexpectedly touching side.
Three. . . ExtremesThe stories in Three. . . Extremes share a loose connection in that all the main characters have an association with modern entertainment.
Dumplings is the lead story and it’s also the best and most effective of them. It happens to feature talents that might be known to a wider Western audience, but I wouldn’t attribute its success to that. Written by Lilian Lee (Farewell My Concubine) the script focuses on an aging former actress’ desire to recapture her youth and beauty, leading her to a radical solution.
That may sound similar to the recent movie, The Substance, but Dumplings is more disturbing and presents a different moral dilemma in a way that Hollywood would never dare to touch. (Go ahead, Hollywood, I dare you.) Dialog is handled in a matter-of-fact way, making the ethical ramifications even more impactful.
I don’t recommend eating right before or while watching this one.
Bai Ling is the one name that will be the most familiar to Western audiences, and she is perfect as the dumpling maker with a cloudy past and a miraculous recipe. Miriam Yeung is well-know for her comedic roles, and she gives the role of the fading actress remarkable depth as she chooses between her humanity and her vanity.
The second feature is Cut and it’s centered on a hot director making a vampire film, who has an unexpected visitor after shooting for the day. Like Dumplings, the movie presents a main character with a moral choice, but this one is much, much tougher. The visitor presents him with two possible paths, both horrifying. Part home invasion thriller and part revenge story, there are overt elements of class struggles and superficial pretenses that masks underlying darkness. (Coincidentally, it offers commentary on society’s futile attempts to fight the consequences of age, but this one is played for dark laughs.) The first part of the story is played with a light and almost humorous tone, before shifting into something completely serious and shocking that could very well be set in the Saw universe.
While film fans may find the setup interesting, especially given the characters’ background stories, it has the problem of them being both unlikeable and unrelatable, robbing it of potency. Still, the engrossing acting, staging, and production values are all effective for the story, with the set design as a visual highlight.
Box is the final story for this collection and the most perplexing. Like the other two, it has elements revolving around performance and entertainment. In this case, it’s an author who lives a secluded life. Flashbacks tell the harsh story of a young girl’s life as a contortionist who performs with her sister under the guidance of an older man. Like the other films in this collection, there are some upsetting moral decisions made, but one features something horrible but completely unintentional.
Are these glimpses of an author’s earlier life, dreams, or imagination? Answers aren’t clear and listening to the director’s commentary didn’t add much insight as he urges viewers not to overthink it. That’s not an approach that works well for me, so my personal bias is definitely reflected in the grade. Those that prefer coming up with their own interpretations of events will find plenty to like about the dreamy qualities and open-ended nature.
Taken as a whole, these three shorts live up to their extreme title, as all are much more visceral in impact, and not suitable for the overly timid.
Visuals: All six films have clear and distinctive looks to them. Even though they were filmed in the 2000s, there is a striking amount of grain present. This is not a complaint, just an observation. Purists like me will be glad to see that their original look has been retained. There’s a slight amount of banding in the opening titles of Three, but I didn’t notice anything during the course of the actual movies.
Memories has a modern look to it with bold expressive colors and dark shadowy set pieces. The camera lingers slowly over the opening sequence as we take in the family’s apartment setting. Outdoor scenes feature bluish tones giving off a chill tone even during daylight. The film likes to play with darks dim lighting, giving it an unnatural feel.
Being set in a time before electricity, much of what happens in The Wheel is lit by moonlight, candles, and lanterns. This leaves some shots looking intentionally murky, while others show good use of contrast between light and shadow. Colors of the puppets and costumes pop with glowing golden accents and outdoor vegetation is a rich, deep green.
Colors are muted for Going Home, fittingly for the run-down building. There’s one short action sequence that looks as though it may have been rendered on a computer and later transferred to film, but I couldn’t find any information on that, so I could be completely wrong. The overall cinematography isn’t flashy, but it perfectly matches the story and themes of the segment.
Dumplings features a drab cityscape that contrasts with the colorful, but shabby interior of the apartment where the titular dish is served, and the actress’ lush and well-appointed home. Colors for the dumplings’ ingredients are slick and vibrant, perfectly suited to the theme of the story. Skin tones range from natural to radiant.
Cut takes place primarily on a movie production set where colors are rich and deep with good contrast and dramatic lighting that frame the details of the story. This is a lush visual production, remarkable for a low budget project. Those here will be sure to notice the distinctive look of the McIntosh audio equipment displayed in the setting.
In contrast to the earlier shorts, Box is a much colder-looking film. Outdoor winter shots are a gloomy blue. Interior shots are also muted and depressing with minimal set dressing, while flashbacks involve saturated, almost glowing, reds for reasons that will eventually become apparent.
Audio: Just like the look of each film, the soundtracks are widely varied. Originally released in stereo, the discs also offer a 5.1 mix that adds some directional cues, panning effects, and extra ambiance that doesn’t feel artificial. This is a fine example of remixing done right.
The soundtrack for Memories gives us the opportunities for some well-placed jump scares. Music is sparce but atonal moments give it a good sense of eeriness. Parts are almost silent as we’re left with characters alone trying to understand what is happening.
Sticking with its roots, The Wheel is steeped in traditional music and singing combined with some modern influences. This blends well with the story, taking the audience back in time and space. Drums drive the action during the later parts of the movie, with a sinister chorus closing things out.
Going Home offers a lyrical but haunting set of themes. Vaguely romantic but with undertones hinting at dread, it’s a wonderful score that resonates on an emotional level, evoking conflicting feelings of nostalgia, wonder, and trepidation. There are some nice creaking effects in the rear surrounds in the 5.1 mix that help establish the age of the apartment building.
Dumplings starts with a brash off-kilter score that creates unease, especially when mixed with the sounds of the filling ingredients as their being chopped up. The music shifts to a softer piano and piece as they’re later dropped into the boiling water and served, then blending the two as they’re about to be eaten. It then takes an unexpected twist as the chef serenades the actress as she consumes her meal, with softer tones blending with the visceral sounds of slurping and chewing. It’s an effective technique that underscores the attractiveness of the dumpling conflicting with their disturbing contents.
Cut features a classical music score, heavy on piano which makes perfect sense for one of the characters. Once the story kicks into high gear, a new musical element of soft chimes and breathy whispered tones are added. A jazzy piece is used to return some humor to balance the dark twists. This is another creative mix that works well with the themes presented.
Box has a minimal amount of sound overall, with some silent parts, which heightens the dramatic events. The most noticeable part of the score comes, fittingly, from a music box.
Special Features: As with all Arrow productions, this set holds a bounty of extras. The filmmakers’ commentaries offer interesting anecdotes about the creation of their projects, while the booklet’s essays offer some perspective on the different stories and cultural aspects that may not be familiar to Western audiences. For example, David Desser’s piece points out that the dialog between the two main characters in Dumplings is in two different Chinese dialects. Even though they can each understand what the other is saying, the two women stick with their cultural heritage; a touch that is completely lost for those of us relying on subtitles.
The cover is noteworthy in that each of the six objects shown are key to the different tales.
- A reversible sleeve featuring newly commissioned artwork for both films
- An illustrated collector’s booklet featuring new writing on the films
- A double-sided foldout poster featuring newly commissioned artwork
- Brand new interviews with producer and “Going Home” director Peter Ho-Sun Chan, “Memories” director Kim Jee-woon, and cinematographer Hong Kyoung-pyo;
- Terror Without Borders, a newly edited interview with Peter Ho-Sun Chan, filmed in 2005 by Frédéric Ambroisine
- Between Life and Death, a newly edited interview with “Going Home” star Eugenia Yuan, filmed in 2004 by Frédéric Ambroisine
- Archival interviews
- A making-of featurette
- The original theatrical trailer
- Audio commentary on the segment “Box” by director Takashi Miike
- Cooking Dumplings, a brand new interview with “Dumplings” director Fruit Chan
- Something a Little More Beautiful, a brand new interview with Takashi Miike
- Taste, Taboo and Truth, a newly edited interview with Fruit Chan, filmed in 2004 by Frédéric Ambroisine
- More Than Skin Deep, a newly edited interview with “Dumplings” star Bai Ling, filmed in 2005 by Frédéric Ambroisine
- Making-of featurettes for each segment
- Trailers for Three... Extremes and the feature-length version of “Dumplings.”
Final Verdict: Arrow has given us another value-added package and presentation of two smaller films that aren’t well known, especially in the U.S. Between the six short films here, there’s something for just about everyone that can appreciate stories the fantastical, albeit with a dark edge. The wide variety means that not everything will work equally for all people, but each of them is different and interesting enough to warrant a watch. This is especially true for those only familiar with more popular versions of Asian horror, such as The Ring and The Grudge.
The two standout productions were Going Home and Dumplings, but for completely different reasons. Going Home offers the richest and deepest story. Backed by an examination of love and faith, it’s filled with both romance and tragedy in an unconventional way. On the other extreme, Dumplings elicits strong feelings of revulsion that really hit at the core of its themes in a way that few films in this genre do.
While the other segments weren’t as effective to me, horror is often in the eye of the beholder. They’re all well-done on a technical level and offer a different perspective than the typical Western counterparts in the genre. They just didn’t stick with me the same way that Going Home and Dumplings did.
This is highly recommended for those that enjoy Asian cinema and/or horror films with an artistic twist that are looking for something filled with variety. The video is true to the source and the 5.1 remix offers a quality upgrade over the original stereo release.
Fun Fact: The writing/directing team of Lilian Lee and Fruit Chan that created Dumplings fleshed out a full-length version of the story with expanded events and new ending.
My Review System:JVC DLA-RS3100 4K Ultra High-Definition Front Projector
Elite Screens Sable Frame B2 117” Width with Infinitely Variable Height
Monolith by Monoprice HTP-1 16 Channel Processor with Dirac Live
Monolith by Monoprice 7x200 Watts Amp
Monolith by Monoprice 3x200 Watts + 6x100 Watts Amp
JBL Studio 590 for Left, Center, Right, Wides, and Rears
JBL Studio 580 for Side Surrounds
JBL Studio SCS 8 for Tops
JTR Captivator 1400 Subwoofer X 4
Panasonic DP-UB420 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray Player
Oppo BDP-93
NVIDIA Shield Android TV - 4K
Xbox One X
HTPC Running madVR (work in progress)
Remote: URC MX-780
Mini DSP 2X4 HD controlling all subwoofers
APC S15 Power Conditioner with Battery Backup
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