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Audio Format: DD 5.1, DD 2.0 Video Format: Widescreen 1.85:1 Languages: English Subtitles: English, Spanish, Korean Region Code: 3 Year Made: 2005 Running Time: 112
As Singapore??s first ever horror flick, The Maid is director/screenwriter Kelvin Tong??s attempt to expand the Asian horror scope beyond Japan and Korea. While no small feat, given the lore beneath the atmospheric horror flicks from the aforementioned nations, recent disappointments like Premonition and Infection make this a potentially perceptive endeavour.
 For one, Tong??s effort is identifiably Singaporean. Wide-eyed Filipino Rosa Dimaano (Alessandra De Rossi) arrives in the nation state on the first day of the Hungry Ghost month and gets a maid position with the affable Mr and Mrs Teo (Chen Shu Cheng & Hong Hui Fang) and their mentally-handicapped son Ah Soon (Benny Soh). Soon, her innocent breaking of various rules (e.g., stepping on the ashes, sitting on the front row of a Chinese opera) stirs the supernatural realm, and the manifested ghosts are unrelenting. They stroke her hair, grab her feet and generally freak her out. Yet as she comes to terms with her visions, she begins to suspect that these might be purpose behind the sightings. And with her brother sick and financially needy back home, surviving the 30 days becomes doubly imperative??
For another, Tong has captured some uniquely intelligent insights throughout. His camerawork is constantly fluid, mimicking the motions of invisible apparitions, while his Rosa constantly speaks to herself through mental voiceovers, an exercise undoubtedly familiar to many a lonesome maid. And take away the shady past, and Mr and Mrs Teo??s innate paranoia and misgivings towards their maid borders on simple middle-class racism that has so subconsciously permeated through postcolonial societies. In many ways, Tong??s snapshot of Singaporean (and Malaysian) culture anchors his story home, whetting our appetite for the main course that should be an all out scare fest.
In many non-cinematic ways, The Maid is groundbreaking. It does enough to scare the superstitious while educating the ignorant about the auspicious festival.
During the Seventh month on the Chinese calendar, the gates of hell open and the dead rise to walk the Earth. There are rules people must follow for 30 days in order to survive. Never swim, never turn back at night when you hear someone calling your name, and never talk to strangers on a deserted road. Break any of the rules, and you face the haunting consequences. Rosa (Alessandra de Rossi), a young woman from the Philippines, arrives in Singapore to work as a domestic maid. Na?e and innocent, she has never believed in the supernatural and ultimately breaks the rules of the seventh month, one by one. Now she will pay a terrible price for her ignorance.
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