Fright nights

In sharp contrast to the festival feel of the upcoming National Day holiday on October 1, two scary thriller pictures are doing the rounds in movie theaters.

Connected (Baochi Tonghua), a loose adaptation of David R. Ellis's Cellular, is about a ruthless gang, a kidnapped woman and a stranger she gets connected to by cell phone.

Taiwanese star and TV hostess Barbie Hsu plays the woman who is kidnapped and locked in a closet. The gangster smashes the cell phone into pieces but she makes it work with her expertise in electrical engineering and randomly contacts a stranger, played by Hong Kong A-lister Louis Koo.