Micahel Kwah Chong Yeun
Overview
Tom’s girlfriend dies in a tragic accident and he plunges into depression. May is shunned by the people around her because she claims she can see spirits. Sam is an expert masseuse and gives Tom great massages. Sam’s family loses their fortune and is forced to move in with his friend Tom, sleeping naked on the same bed. The three friends embrace on a journey that begins with the mysterious disappearance of Tom’s father, who leaves Tom with only a spiritual book and an ancient Tibetan Dzi Bead. It is not until Sam is trapped in a spiritual realm that they realise the importance of the items.
Cast
Reviews
4 min readA Ghost Story for the Living
I’ll admit it: I wasn’t expecting much. A 2008 Hong Kong comedy-fantasy called The Spirit Compendium, directed by someone named Benny Foo Fung Koon, with a synopsis that reads like a lost Supernatural fanfic—depression, naked roommates, ancient Tibetan beads, and a masseuse who might be more than he seems. The runtime is listed as "0 minutes," which feels like a metaphor for how little I thought this would matter.
And yet here I am, days later, still turning over a single image in my mind: a man lying on a bed, his face half-lit by a flickering lamp, while something unseen presses down on his chest.
That’s the thing about ghosts. They don’t need to be scary to haunt you.
The Spirit Compendium refuses to sit neatly in any genre. It’s a comedy that isn’t always funny, a fantasy that doesn’t bother with world-building, and a drama that stumbles into moments of real emotional weight. The plot—what there is of it—follows three friends: Tom, grieving the death of his girlfriend; May, who sees spirits but is dismissed as delusional; and Sam, the masseuse with a secret.
When Tom’s father vanishes, he leaves behind a spiritual book and a Dzi bead, objects that become the key to Sam’s entrapment in a liminal space between life and death. It’s the kind of story that could easily dissolve into nonsense, but Foo’s direction keeps it just coherent enough to feel like a dream you’re trying to remember upon waking.
What’s fascinating is how the film treats its supernatural elements. There’s no CGI spectacle here, no jump scares or gothic horror aesthetics. The spirits are often just… there.
Buzz & Rumors
Public reportsThey burned joss paper on a Singapore set so the sky would clear, then spent eight hours on a bed scene.
Do not confuse this with Frank Miller's The Spirit. The Spirit Compendium, original title 靈問, is Benny Foo Fung Koon's first feature, an 85-minute Mandarin film with Chinese and English subtitles. Sinema.SG called it one of the first indies of Singapore's 2008 National Day window and "the darling of the Chinese press." TMDB files it under fantasy and comedy. The plot is a grief triangle plus a Tibetan Dzi bead. Tom's girlfriend dies. May sees spirits and gets shunned for saying so. Sam the masseur moves in after his family loses its money. Tom's missing father leaves a spiritual book. latestnetflix.com's take is that Foo told interviewers the film was a mix of love, friendship, "a touch of homosexuality," deities, and spirits, and that it was not a standard ghost picture.
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The production started in the Lunar Seventh Month, Ghost Month. The crew ran incense ceremonies. On one outdoor day the sky went dark. Foo said they burned joss paper for the spirits, the sky cleared, they finished the setup, and rain hit the second they wrapped. He told that as a schedule story, not a special effect. Timeline talk drifted. He told Sinema.SG the cameras ran about a month and a half, with three months of editing. His production blog put the whole job at a year, three months of prep, and roughly two months of shooting. He had come through SBC producer and scriptwriting courses, Southern Arts Drama Group, and a 1992 Panasonic Video Award for the short Monica. The next script, he said, was already titled Seven. ,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmZieKS5AyE
Homework DVDs and an NC16 slot. Benjamin Ng, winner of Channel U's 2004 talent search The Next Big Thing, plays Tom. He had chicken pox weeks before cameras and still showed up. He said the long Chinese lines were the real work, then admitted the sex scenes with a man were a first. Foo handed the actors DVDs as homework. Early takes collapsed into laughter. Michael Kwah, English-speaking, playing Sam, called the Mandarin "a total nightmare" and slept with the script. On the production blog he compared the twist to Brokeback Mountain and said they spent around seven to eight hours on the bed scene because they could not afford to go shy on a tight schedule. Foyce Le Xuan plays May, the girl who sees spirits and holds back while Tom mourns someone else. She had been in a car crash two months before the shoot, face in the windscreen, and used that injury as the image for fear. Maylene Loo plays Bella, the dead girlfriend. The film played NC16 at Sinema Old School on August 22, 2008, tickets six Singapore dollars. , , ,
That is the entire rumor mill. Ghost Month weather magic, a first-time director, two newcomers working through a same-sex scene in Mandarin, and a National Day indie slot the English-language trades barely noticed. Ng warned viewers not to walk in expecting a typical horror film. The July 2008 trailer is still the artifact. ,
Entertainment rumors and trivia aggregated from public reporting. Treat speculation as unverified unless a cited source confirms it.