The Imp (1981)

directed by Dennis Yu
Hong Kong
95 minutes
3.5 stars out of 5
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At the risk of sounding like one of those people who tries to compare everything to Eraserhead, this movie reminds me of Eraserhead. Not because it's surreal or nightmarish or involves a protagonist with a distinctive hairstyle, but because both movies deal with the anxiety of new fatherhood manifesting itself as a bizarre, possibly supernatural encounter or series of encounters. The main character in The Imp is an underpaid night security guard with a pregnant wife at home, and while his anxieties may not specifically be towards the prospect of having a child, he's certainly got enough on his plate in the prospect of taking care of a child to warrant a stress ghost sighting or two.

Something about this movie feels "with it"; not in a hip, slang-abusing way, but in a way that feels strangely modern even now, almost 40 years removed from its release. I got some vibes from this that reminded me of movies like Candyman or The People Under the Stairs, or other 80s/90s horrors that take place in "urban" environments. It's dated, but it holds up well as a respectable time capsule of its era, genre, and origins. The humor is zany but also universally funny through the use of occasional non-sequiturs, like a character wearing a shirt that says "Am I A Girl?" and then later one that says "NO! I Am A Man".

There really aren't a lot of imp sightings at all in this movie, but the payoff is good. When we do see the physical manifestation of the spirit, it looks surprisingly striking. And in the meantime we get these ridiculous, overblown death scenes, guys elaborately choking to death on food and bursting into flames inside their cars, stuff like that. For a Hong Kong horror movie, this unfortunately doesn't have much in the way of ooey-gooey practical effects, but at the climax there is a ghostly visitation scene with some genuinely creepy prosthetics.

All in all I really did enjoy this one, barring a couple stretches where it got either boring or off-topic and lost me for a bit. It's a little bit goofy but never enough to get in the way of taking the film seriously or make it feel entirely like a comedy. I always love seeing movies deal with specific types of supernatural entities that are separated from the typical Western construct of "ghost", and I like them even better like this when the supernatural just is, and the reason why it's there isn't overly important.