Hilarious comedy disguised as a lurid psychological thriller with science fiction elements. Virtual Recall is so terribly directed and overacted that it’s automatically a frontrunner for comedy of the year. Stephen Fung and Cherrie Ying have done better work, obviously.

Hong Kong, the present day. At the luxurious Yee Low Mental Sanatorium, psychiatrist Xiao Tingqin (Tang Yifei) is assigned the case of “special” patient Sum Liu-sheung (Cherrie Ying), who claims to live both in the real world and 12 parallel universes, and appears to have special powers. As soon as they meet, Sum starts playing mind-games with Xiao, whose one-year-old marriage to independently wealthy policeman Zhen Shanlin (Stephen Fung) is already under serious strain, due to her workaholia and her aversion to being touched by him. Sum introduces Xiao to the scientific concept of “worm-holes”, through which one can travel in time and to parallel universes, and stirs memories in Xiao of her past relationship both with Zhen and her first love, Ji Lü. Zhen’s friendship with gourmet-food shop-owner Gu Xilin has also put further strain on her marriage, and one day, meeting them in the street, she starts to wonder whether Sum has enabled her to experience parallel versions of her life.

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