EVIL (2003), dir. Mikael Hafstrom

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What is “pure evil?” According to this searing Swedish drama, it’s causing pain to others simply because one is bigger, or has the protection of the authorities. It’s bullying, and it’s even worse when the bully is reasonably intelligent. Stand up to this kind and they may leave you alone temporarily, but all the while, they’ll be plotting any manner of alternative ways to get at you.

At the beginning of “Evil,” public school thug Erik Ponti (Andreas Wilson) is accused of being exactly this sort of psychopath. He scraps with his classmates, has been suspected of stealing, and despite what glimmer of academic ability he has shown, there is little chance he’ll be admitted to college. What Erik’s critics don’t know is the physical abuse he’s endured at the hands of his stepfather; only Erik’s mother knows, and in desperation, she sends him off to a private boarding school called Stjarnsberg, pleading with him to save what’s left of his future.

From the outside, Stjarnsberg looks like any other preparatory institution for sons of the rich and prominent. Despite being 17, Erik is roomed with younger, fresher-faced students, and his roommate is Pierre (Henrik Lundstrom), an affable dork who brings him up to speed on how things are run. Here the upperclassmen police the lowerclassmen, punishing infractions such as public cursing with some physical reprimand – for example, one student gets struck over the head with a spoon. But it goes further: basically, the lowerclassmen have to do the upperclassmen’s bidding, and when Erik balks, he finds himself at odds with Silverhielm (Gustaf Starsgard), who proves one heck of a sadistic senior.

Pretty much the entire Stjarnsberg upper class sets out to make Erik submit. When he won’t clean a pile of their mud-encrusted shoes, they make him dig ditches in the yard and other forms of hard labor. As for the headmaster, he generally turns a blind eye to whatever the older students do to the younger. Worse, there is a boxing square where lowerclassmen can be challenged to fight, but it’s always two-to-one in favor of upper-classmen, meaning it’s really a place for bigger students to beat smaller, weaker boys into pulp. Erik would be the exception; however, he refuses to engage in fisticuffs out of his promise to his mother to stay out of trouble.

Viewers will figure out early that Erik gets off the sidelines (note the scene where he and Pierre bond over their mutual love of “Rebel Without a Cause,” and the latter says his favorite scene is when James Dean is standing over his best friend’s dead body). To be fair, “Evil” doesn’t telegraph itself quite so cleanly, and it’s pretty good until about halfway through, when a plotline involving Erik’s swimming ability – which gives the underclassmen their first opportunity to steal some glory from the uppers – gets abandoned in favor of escalating antics (although nothing quite tops the use of a bucket containing human waste during the film’s middle).

What lesson are we supposed to take away from all this? Authority figures with absolute power can corrupt absolutely, be they favored students or step-parents? That’s all well and good, but as far as I can tell, the movie never presents or proposes any solution to this problem (and “Evil” does seem to think it’s that). If Erik is to be our example, the only real hope appears to be enduring indefinitely or getting oneself a good attorney. True, he does get a love interest for distraction, but their relationship is strangely underdeveloped, although one scene which amounts to, “You appear to have hypothermia. Let’s have sex,” is pretty funny.

The movie does try to say something about how abuse can shape us, either as individuals or as a mass: Erik was a thug because his stepfather would verbally and physically hurt him; meanwhile, Pierre points out that when Silverhielm was an underclassman himself, he probably had to endure atrocities similar to what he dishes out now. When the movie does allow Silverhielm an explanation, he says Erik’s defiance in and of itself caused him a “living Hell.” This implies the cyclical nature of bullying at Stjarnsberg breeds peer pressure; poor Silverhielm must make his charges fall in line, or else.

However, the most telling scene about the effects of abuse might be when Erik gets one of his tormentors alone, acts like he’s going to kill them, and starts explaining how he will commit the murder and get away with it. It all sounds half-baked, but the victim breaks down and starts begging for their life, at which point Erik looks at them, genuinely half-surprised. “You really thought I was going to do it, didn’t you?” he says, and the answer is: Of course they did. When a person has spent so much time around human beings at their absolute worst, what else would they expect of anyone but the same?

Overall rating: ** (out of ****)

INNER SENSES (2002), dir. Chi-Leung Law

Ever since “The Sixth Sense” came out almost a decade ago, various movies have tried following in the footsteps of M. Night Shymalan’s supernatural-themed drama, mostly by packaging boogedy-boogedy tales with twist endings. The made-in-Hong Kong “Inner Senses” starts off as such a retread, but doesn’t take very long before finding its own way. The path it takes may be more romantic and mainstream than “The Sixth Sense,” yet the film is entertaining nonetheless, even without the twist ending, which is actually more like a twisted middle.

As in Shymalan’s film, “Inner Senses’” main protagonists consist of a fragile soul who claims to see dead people, and a haunted-looking psychiatrist who tries to help. It should be noted that the predecessor starred Haley Joel Osment as a young boy whose “I… see… dead people” quickly became a popular catchphrase; “Inner Senses” star “Karena Lam,” on the other hand, is an extremely beautiful young woman. My point is we don’t expect the “The Sixth Sense’s” surrogate father-son relationship so much as a romantic one, especially given how good-looking a couple she and co-star Leslie Cheung make from the outset.

However, before these two can ride off into the sunset, they have to deal with the problems of Lam’s character Yan, who claims she isn’t sick but really does see ghosts. We first glimpse her ability shortly after she has moved into a spacious but creepily drab-looking apartment, and a man appears in a room one moment and is gone the next. Having already seen numerous doctors to no avail, Yan ends up with Cheung’s intelligent, rational-seeming, and thoroughly workaholic Dr. Jim, who gives university lectures on how ghosts are merely the result of years of cultural stimuli.

According to Jim, Chinese culture is especially steeped in the supernatural. “We use ghosts to teach things,” he says, giving an example of how parents often tell their children, “Do this or don’t do that, otherwise a ghost will get you.” It is interesting that, in a Hollywood ghost-related film, the supporting cast is typically composed of non-believers, but almost the opposite is the case here – Jim is practically surrounded by superstitious, spirit-appeasing characters. In one scene, a respected colleague admits he will not take Yan in, despite being married to her cousin. Is it because Yan thinks she sees ghosts? On the contrary, it’s because she might actually see them, and both this rational-seeming medical professional and his wife are terrified of ghosts.

“There are already so many people in Hong Kong. Where would the ghosts live?” Jim asks his colleague. Nevertheless, in typical cinematic psychiatry-fashion, he and Yan manage to develop a close friendship over a short period of time, as he attempts to unearth the repressed memories responsible for her specters, including being abandoned by her parents when very young and rejected by a boyfriend after getting too possessive. But is burying the past and boosting her self-esteem really all Yan needs? Meanwhile, what’s up with the strange changes the good doctor appears to go through, including insomnia and flashbacks that initially seem connected to Yan’s childhood?

Like “The Sixth Sense,” there is a mighty twist, only it happens about an hour in as opposed to the last five minutes. As such, “Inner Senses” is a movie of two halves, the first carried along by scare scenes and the burgeoning relationship between the two leads, the second by recycling the first half’s themes of repression, trauma and suicide, and amping up the stuff going bump in the night. Unfortunately, the latter represents the film at its weakest; “Inner Senses” has some creepy-effective moments early on and in the middle, as we wonder if Jim’s problems are purely psychological, the result of a fear of intimacy. But as soon as the horror gets more visceral, the movie just gets grosser and goofier. On the bright side, it culminates in what could be the most touching necrophilia scene ever committed to celluloid.

But at least the first half sets up enough clues that we don’t feel cheated once the twist kicks in. We also come to care about the protagonists; Kam and Cheung convey vulnerability well, and Cheung’s performance is particularly great, the actor practically embodying such qualities as intelligence, decency, and empathy. He also shows a wealth of versatility in scenes I won’t get give away, except to say they could be compared to Mickey Rourke in “Angel Heart,” which I mean as the highest compliment. It should be noted that “Inner Senses” was the last movie Cheung worked on before committing suicide, and watching him try to help someone with their personal demons seems highly ironic, knowing how he ultimately couldn’t outrun his own.

Overall rating: *** (out of ****)