I’m sure some would conveniently associate Kelvin Tong with the dismal Men in White, forgetting that the writer-director had successes in earlier works, Eating Air and The Maid. I enjoyed neither Men in White nor his experimental Love Story, but with Rule #1, Kelvin Tong hencefoth gets my vote of confidence, if he steers clear of bad comedy and pretentious art-house flicks.

What I do like about each one of his movies is that it grips you right from the start. How it develops is a different tale, but his introductions are nothing short of mesmerizing. Here, he warns you to throw all assumptions out the window when watching Rule #1: The opening scenes are frantic and leave you questioning in which direction the movie will propel itself.

Thankfully, it makes all the right moves, apart from momentarily lapses into cheap scares that don’t add much value. Yes, we know how Tong crafts scenes to send shivers down your spine until the crescendo (even Men in White’s introduction pulls this off), but some scenes were unnecessary except to anchor the movie in the supernatural. Rule #1’s central plot doesn’t become clear until midway through the movie, and from then on the film lunges onto a higher plateau at breakneck speed, making the audience second- and triple-guessing themselves all the way to the finale. Even if some flashbacks are too spelt out for the movie’s good.

It was smart to make this film in Hong Kong, where Tong has an able crew (cinematographer Keung Kwok Man makes it look really edgy) and leads like Ekin Cheng and Shawn Yue. Cheng plays the head honcho in the police force’s Miscellaneous Affairs Department (MAD, heh),which periodically revceives calls straight from the X-Files. The drunken antics and devil-may-care attitude of Cheng’s Inspector Wong seem to stem from his long service in MAD, but he survives day-to-day with a mantric Rule #1 – ‘There are no such things as ghosts’ – which he imparts to team rookie Sergeant Lee (Shawn Yue). Lee slowly learns that the mantra and scientific explanations seem to run contrary to what Wong really knows. Yue gives a tremendous performance as the pained Lee in John Constantine garb, who, in a second chance at life, appears to have had his eyes opened to ghosts. Scenes where the two male leads play off each other are few, but I particularly enjoyed the stakeout scene when they banter matter-of-factly how to approach the impending scenario, before their greatest fears come alive, and the rug beneath our feet starts to stir.

Sure, there are homages to movies like The Fallen and The Suicide Club, and a lot of ‘waking up’ moments, but they never once marred my enjoyment. Rule #1 had enough suspenseful moments to thrill, and Kelvin Tong seemed very assured on the familiar ground of horror. Those expecting an all-out fright-fest may be disappointed as Rule #1 turns on a supernatural spin more than it does on moments of terror, and fans of Fiona Xie will find that their Mediacorp darling is yet again relegated to a wall flower role, despite this being her second movie outing (after One Leg Kicking). Here she plays the dutiful girlfriend to Sergeant Lee and is half-asleep most of the time (nothing is sexy about that either).

Rule #1 is Kelvin Tong’s best movie to date, executed as well as, or even better than, any Asian thriller in recent memory. He has shown again that he can craft commercially viable movies with relatively original stories to tell.