One day, Fong who has an almost complete recovery from his coma accident, decides that it his time to get back to work for the police force. His first new case will be about a serial killer who has the strange fetish to rape and kill nurses. Helped by his past partner, Fong will try everything he can to get this mysterious killer. Using his special ability to talk to ghosts, Fong will get closer and closer to finally catch the killer. But his friendly ghost buddy Kit told him that he should also watch closely over his lovely nurse Oscar, suspecting that she might be the next victim of the serial killer.

Review: One thing that Hong Kong cinema has never been able to really master is the psychological horror genre. If we take a closer look, Hong Kong has never been able to produce a really scary movie. Maybe except for those crazy Category 3 movies, which are usually more shocking that chilling, Hong Kong cinema's attempt of being really scary has never really succeeded, at least for the northern American public. Their only horror movies that have ever been able to get notice were more horror/comedy oriented than really frightening. Maybe the fact that North American doesn't perceive ghost the same way that Chinese people do is probably one of the major causes of why we are not frightened by their ghost stories. If we compare Hong Kong and Japanese cinema, Hong Kong still has a long road to go before being able to produce something as frightening as most Japanese psychological horror movies.

In this case, you probably already have noticed, by reading the story description, that the major influence of "Nightmare on Precinct 7" is of course the American movie, "The Sixth" Sense. Using the same idea of someone who can see and speak to ghost is not really original, but at least the similarity stops there.

Directed by Herman Yau, responsible for such classic movies as "The Untold Story" and "Ebola Syndrome," co-written by Simon Lui who also plays a role in the movie, "Nightmare on Precinct 7" is a great attempt from Hong Kong cinema trying on the serious psychological horror genre. The story is very well done and even if it sometimes seems a little hard to follow because of the flashback storytelling, the whole idea is very well executed and far from those ridiculous ghost stories that Hong Kong has offered us so often in the past. So why "Nightmare on Precinct 7" is more effective is probably because the visual approach was very well executed and that the movie also had that nervous, chilling atmosphere that can scare people. The only down side of the story is probably when you finally discover the true identity of the killer, which was not very clear. During the movie, the story gives us a few hints about who it can be, but some of these hints seem to have been there only to fool the audience. Sometime it looked logical but some of these hints are also very confusing and made the story even more complicated.

But the most memorable thing about the film is the ending. I bet you anything that you will be very surprised by it. Nobody who I have watched the movie with has ever predicted the ending! And no, it's not like the ending of "The Sixth Sense!" I'm sure that the ending will cause a lot of controversy as some will like it a lot and others will hate it, but what is sure is that everyone will agree that it is without a doubt one of the most unexpected endings you will have ever see in a movie.

What I found that usually hurts Hong Kong horror ghost stories are the levels of acting; most of the time the characters are really cheesy and sometime annoying. Even when you have some big name like Francis Ng, Simon Lui or Sam Lee, it seems that they are in the movie only to make some quick cash. Surprisingly, "Nightmare on Precinct 7" doesn't suffer from a case of bad acting. The main character, played by the actor/signer Andy Hui Chi-On, was specially very good and believable as a typical good guy cop. Simon Lui, a regular of ghost story movies, was also very good too in the serious role of the cop partner of Andy Hui. As Lee Lai-Chun, in the role of the sweet nurse Oscar, she was also a memorable character. But the best secondary characters was Kit the friendly ghost, played by Cheung Tat-Ming a great actor who is mainly used in comedy; he was especially funny and never got to the annoying level that usually these kind of characters become on screen.

Since "Nightmare on Precinct 7" is a ghost story, the movie tries of course to scare you but this is were the movie had most of the trouble. The movie had a great atmosphere but I don't know about you but Asian ghosts don't scare me at all (except Sadako in the "Ring" series). Most of the time the ghosts appeared on screen with a small amount of make up or long hair in the face and they used a green flashlight to light their faces. So in general, I didn't find the ghosts scary, except the one with CGI at the beginning of the movie; this one really caught me off guard, especially since CGI usually doesn't scare me at all. They should have used more similar effects during the movie but the limited budget was probably the reason why they didn't used more CGI for the others ghost. In all, the scary factor was far from those great Japanese psychological horror movies but it was a lot better than what I was expecting. Hong Kong will probably never be able to beat those Japanese at the art of scaring people but this movie was a better attempt than those past cheesy ghost story movies that I saw before.