FALL IN FOR 23:591 min read
Reading Time: < 1 minuteThis has got to be one of the longest gestation period of a Singapore film in recent years that has been stuck in development hell, then jumpstarted with a new lease of life.
The army camps and training grounds have got to be fuel for countless of ghost stories, but none as legendary as the famous Charlie Company (which at one time was a working title) at Pulau Tekong featuring the bunk with the infamous twin doors.
There isn’t any definitive version since the tale had gone through countless of reinterpretations by generations of drill sergeants and recruits alike, and I should know since I was trained within the confines of the same camp, and have to pass by that bunk for four months en route to the cookhouse during my conscript military training days. Just saying.
In any case I first caught whiff of the project during the time when I co-interviewed writers-directors Gilbert Chan and Joshua Chiang for their breakthrough indie feature S11 back in 2006, and Gilbert had mentioned he was working on Charlie Company.
Since then he had gone on to co-direct films such as Love Matters with Jack Neo, while horror-comedies in Where Got Ghosts and The Ghosts Must Be Crazy, and the telemovie Pulau Hantu highlighted the appeal of local army horror stories, and I suppose with the setup of Gorylah Pictures in 2009, the stars have finally aligned for this project to be green lit, and so we’re at this point in time where the feature now known as 23:59 is complete, and due for a release in October later this year.
