The Lingering is a drama with mild horror influences and a very positive message. The story in three parts revolves around Dawa, a young boy who lives in an old family mansion with his caring mother Qingyi. One year, the family father doesn't come home for the New Year celebrations and the mansion gets haunted by a mysterious spirit instead. As a young adult, Dawa leaves his devastated mother and the creepy mansion behind to move to a bigger city and get rich and famous. As an adult in his thirties, Dawa returns home with his girlfriend when he must verify whether the body of a drowned woman is his mother's or not.

The first twenty-five minutes taking place in the eighties and the final fifty-five minutes taking place in present-day are connected through some flashbacks that show character development and the negative progression of a complicated mother-son relationship. These connections offer some great ideas but are often lacking fluidity as they pop up randomly and are sometimes unnecessarily repetitive.

The movie's greatest strength is its message about spending time with your loved ones that is much more precious than any career that might provide money and fame. The film quietly criticizes the alienation, greed and selfishness of the contemporary Chinese society. This becomes most obvious when observing characters such as Dawa's self-centered business partner who likes to insert random English vocabulary in his sentences or the obnoxious real estate agent who goes as far as manipulating Dawa in order to force him into selling his family mansion.

The movie has a few mild horror scenes but is overall rather a family drama. The opening twenty-five minutes are quite atmospheric and have an authentic vintage spirit. Another highlight is the present-day scene at a hotel when Dawa and his girlfriend seem to get attacked by an evil spirit. The creepy scene in the hospital restroom also manages to grab attention.

The film's weakest element however is the story that has quite a few holes. It's never explained for instance whose spirit is haunting the couple in the hotel room. The movie ends with a twist that is supposed to be tearjerking but feels completely exaggerated.

In the end, you should watch The Lingering if you are in the mood of watching a family drama with some mild social criticism and a few horror elements. If you were simply expecting a creepy Asian horror movie, you might get disappointed however and should rather explore the Taiwanese The Tag-Along franchise.

Okay, first a word of warning and a confession - the warning: If you're rather literal minded and analytical, you might not like this movie. I would say this movie focuses more on emotional aspects than rational ones. The confession: I read some of the other reviews here before posting mine, and I saw points in both the good and bad reviews.

The people who didn't like this seemed to have problems with questions left unanswered, things that didn't seem to make sense, and the mixture of an emotional drama with a ghost story, wanting it to be one or the other.

For those trying to figure out how the ghost can be this or that person, let's just say it was a demon impersonating all of them. Or something. The scares were still effective enough for me to be satisfying, and I can make up my own reasons for the apparitions with a little creativity. I can see why people had a problem with this, though. It is a little confusing if you linger on it.

Thankfully, for me at least, the story moved along and kept me engaged. The pacing was good. The scary parts were scary, and the emotional parts were emotional, and this movie did both better than a lot of movies I've seen lately. And yeah, it made me cry. I don't think I've ever seen a movie that's this effective at horror AND drama, so I definitely recommend giving it a try.

If you want a really scary ghost story, this is the "wong" movie. Dawa and his mother await the return of Shizi, their father who works at the factory. They are visited by ghosts. 15 minutes into the film we discover that Shizi died in a drowning accident and his mistake caused the death of others. The film then jumps 30 years ahead as Dawa has notoriety as a chef, using his mother's pork recipe. The haunting return.

The film is more about the relationship between mother and son. Yes, there are some ghosts and minor scares. As it turns out the Chinese call Chinese Checkers, "marbles."