House of the Invisibles (2007)

Like the hot pot restaurant used as one of its central locations, Elfa Lee’s 2007 Lunar New Year feature House of The Invisibles is great fun, serving up more laughs than scares. Co-workers at the local eatery, Gigi and Chow are the last remaining tenants in an old apartment building being closed down for some reason. They share their apartments with a bunch of ghosts who are unable to leave the building, trapped in that tricky Taoist purgatory that seems to have many different rules about gaining a happy afterlife.

Lam Suet plays Fatty Chow who is living with his sickly, wheelchair bound wife. With her help, he carries on with hookers to satisfy the needs she can no longer serve. Lam is alternately funny, in his scenes with co-worker Wayne Lai who does his usual comedy shtick, and creepy, in his scenes with his troubled wife and his eager-to-please surrogate. Lovely Leila Tong plays Gigi who lives with her pot-smoking slacker boyfriend who has some issues from his past that haunt him. Lai has a gambling problem and gets involved with some ghosts who love football [soccer] and mahjong. Being a fan of these actors makes this film easy for me to enjoy. The legendary Theresa Ha Ping does a nice job as the spooky charwoman.