Be forewarned, the menu on the main disc is extremely annoying, as it opens with audio of Lau's daughter sniveling from midway through the movie. It's like having icicles stabbed into your ears. Also, the selections are printed on a piece of paper resembling the letter sent to Lau on his wife, and as you can see in the screencap, the words end up appearing extremely small on your TV.

Sound: Viewers can choose between a Dolby 5.1 or DTS sound mix of the original Cantonese track, and a 5.1 mix of a Mandarin audio track. There are three subtitle categories to choose from: Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, and English.

Extras: Disc one only has a small amount of extras: two trailers for 49 Days and some for a handful of other movies. Disc two is entirely special features, some of which are subtitled in English, some of which are not. A cursory 9-minute "Making Of" gives a little background on the folk tale that inspired the film, and shows the crew going to a Buddhist temple to pray for a good shoot. They also covered the cameras with red cloth to bring the endeavor good luck--which never makes up for lack of a good script. Strangely, only the narration on the feature is subtitled in English, and all the actual talking during pre-production meetings and on set is not. On the other hand, the CEN television special on 49 Days is much more in-depth, going over several aspects of the various supernatural elements of the story, including explaining the true nature of those 49 days. These are all fully subtitled, and actually rather interesting. Addendums in this section include cast and crew interviews, but with no English. (It's a constant adventure! You never know what's around the next menu!)

Additionally, there is a rather unfunny blooper real, a couple of short promotional bumpers with more behind-the-scenes footage, a music video, and text filmographies of the cast and crew. All but the latter two have English subtitles.

The outer packaging for the 49 Days DVD is given a real high-end treatment. The film comes in a glossy slipcover with full-sized color images. Inside the plastic case, there is a foldable game board, a miniature die, and game pieces for Lau, Lam, Pang, and Lau's daughter. The game board features all the main characters of the movie, and I think you are trying to lead Lau from his earthly life to some kind of mystical paradise. If there are any instructions, they are in Chinese, however, and to be honest, I don't think the board really says very much. Too bad. The DVD manufacturers could have used the game to help us figure out just what the hell is going on around here.

FINAL THOUGHTS: A pretty nice job is done on a DVD for a movie that really never deserved to be put on DVD in the first place...