The Twins Effect

Story: Reeve (Ekin Cheng) is a vampire hunter who fights along with his new young partner Gypsy (Gillian Chung) against the brood of hell. While the two fight for a world without vampires, Reeve's sister Helen (Charlene Choi) becomes friends with modern vampire prince Kazaf (Edison Cheng). Between Helen and Kazaf, who prefers to die of thirst than to suck human blood, a relationship evolves.
When a european Vampire-Lord wants the blood of the last of the five vampire princes, namely Kazaf's, in order to be able to open the book "Day for Night" to attain unlimited power, a fierce battle between humans and vampires starts to take place. Moreover, Reeve has to reconcile with the fact that his sister loves a vampire - of course this means a lot of problems...

Review: "The Twins Effect" received its title because of the two main actresses - the "Twins", that are Charlene Choi and Gillian Chung. For quite some time they are not only popular due to their Canto-Pop, but they also participated in several movies. This movie once again is one whole advertisement for them. Luckily, Hong Kong does it in a more subtle way and we aren't punished by a movie like, let's say Britney Spear's "Crossroads". Instead we get surprisingly good, even though light-hearted Fantasy-Action-Comedy stuff. The Twins aren't instrusively in the spotlight, since Ekin Cheng, Edison Chen, Anthony Wong and a lot more Hong Kong Stars become their chance to make their appearance in a more or less convincing way, too.

The movie-plot is of course your typical standard one and nothing to write home about. Moreover, the characters haven't much in-depth, nonetheless it's fun to watch the actors doing their thing. You just can see that they had a lot of fun while making the movie, and this is omnipresent throughout the whole movie.
Most of the characters are drawn very likeable and give enough opportunities for some good laughs. The Twins manage to give a nice performance along with Ekin Cheng and Edison Chen, latter playing an interestingly modern-age vampire, including bass-boost loudspeakers and a flatscreen in his coffin! Anthony Wong does also deliver some nice jokes along the way.

Somewhat negative is the cameo by Jacky Chan. In some way, his wedding scene with Karen Mok interferes with the flow of the movie, although there are indeed some funny scenes to be found here. Even his second appearance as an ambulance driver, keeping busy a bunch of vampires Jacky-Chan-style, just seems to be a little bit too forced. Apart from that the movie manages to entertain in a lighthearted manner.
A nice idea is that most of the vampires are represented by Europeans. This gives the whole vampire story something like "credibility".

Fortunately, most cliches have been avoided. Here, vampires can in fact be terrifyingly frightening and don't jump across the screen in the style of a "Mr. Vampire". There are also some other things where one can see that one did put some nice effort into. The weapons are quite interesting and european architecture as fashion are mixed with some few fantasy elements, adding to a cool atmosphere throughout the movie.

"The Twins Effect" is a comedy, nevertheless it's possible for humans to die and it also happens, which brings along some dramatic moments, natch. Generally, the movie is more about the action, which is done really nice and which shines with great fighting sequences choreographed by no one else than Donnie Yen. So in the end, it really looks like all the characters do know Kung Fu - including Wire-Fu, of course!
Also mainly to its nicely done Special Effects the movie can convince with some very cool scenes and fights. In fact, it would have been a waste if one would have made a superhumans-against-vampires movie without spectacular and sometimes sort of comicstyle fights. Very pleasing to the eye!

"The Twins Effect" is a pretty good comedy, offering gags that are most of the time on a slapstick level. Moreover, the movie delivers astonishing action, special effects and likeable characters - popcorn cinema at its best!
If it doesn't always has to be an intelligent and demanding movie for you, then you will have fun with this one, even the more as the movie has it's own undeniable charm.

Buy this movie:

Follow @AsianMovieWeb