Eyes Wide Shut

The Singapore International Festival of Arts (SIFA) kicks off its film section this weekend with Singapore film Demons helmed by Daniel Hui. The rising 32-year-old writer-director is best known for his experimental documentary features, such as Eclipses (2011) and Snakeskin (2014), the latter picking up awards at the Torino Film Festival and Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival.

His latest, Demons, is his first attempt at genre filmmaking, specifically horror. And it is easily one of the trippiest, most hypnotic Singapore films since Eric Khoo's psychedelic 2006 work Zombie Dogs. The plot is not scary so much as dark, opaque and bewildering, breeding a small school of red herrings. But it rewards the attentive viewer with a conclusion that ties all its loose threads, via a dream logic that loops back on itself.

Hui says: "I've always been interested in the horror genre, and even my previous documentaries have touches of the genre. What I like about horror is that there's this bodily relationship between the spectator and the screen: One can have a very physical and visceral reaction to the action on screen in a way that few other genres can evince."