The writer of this article is the writer @ 中中中中中中中中.
Lazy and greedy, do not love labor, only love movies.
Last weekend, two hardcore movies were discussed by everyone.
One is Wei Jiahui+Liu Qingyun’s hot police and bandit suspense film Detective Wars, and the other is the annual Chinese-language horror film Curse that many fans are looking forward to.
"Curse" is a very lively movie both inside and outside the play. It is adapted from the true story of a six-mouth evil in Kaohsiung. The trailer was taken off the platform because it was too scary.
When it was shown in Taiwan Province, China, some viewers fled the cinema in fear, and some went to the temple to worship God after watching it. In the same period, the box office topped the Hollywood blockbuster "New Batman", ranking first at the box office of Taiwan Film this year with a score of NT$ 170 million.
With such a stunt, the appetite of mainland fans is naturally lifted high, and even known as "the best Chinese horror film of the year."
However, after the "curse" was launched, it was scolded by the hot search.
Not for anything else, just because of "bad luck."
Is "The Curse" really horrible or unlucky? Xiaowan has helped everyone to check the film. The front part is "high energy" and timid.
"Curse" strung together a curse spanning six years with two timelines.
Six years ago, if a man and his boyfriend and friends formed a "ghost squad" to explore the mysterious village. The whole village is wrapped in a strange and mysterious atmosphere. Everyone greets with strange gestures and worships strange evil spirits.
Boyfriends and friends broke into the "absolutely forbidden tunnel" and died on the spot, and the villagers also died. If the pregnant man was lucky enough to survive, he left here in a state of mental breakdown.
Six years later, Ruonan, who returned to normal, got her daughter’s right to care, and the mother and daughter started a new life. But strange things have happened one after another, and my daughter has symptoms of evil.
If the man runs around for his daughter, but more innocent people suffer, she finally decides to go back to the source of fear-the tunnel in the forbidden area of cults to find out.
On the surface, the horror elements in The Curse are nothing new, but a combination of "Death in a Forbidden Area", "Curse-ridden" and "Strange Death", with the tearful affection elements of "Motherly Saving Women".
But is the "Curse" really about the story of "the great mother is eager to love her daughter and return to the forbidden area PK evil spirit"?
Not necessarily.
There are many contradictory scenes and details in the film. The biggest doubt is: When did the man know about the evil god The Secret Behind? Six years ago or six years later?
We can interpret this film in a different way, which may break the existing story about "maternal love".
Formally, The Curse also belongs to the popular screen/desktop movie in recent years, which is constantly switching between mobile phone screen, computer screen and video recording in the monitoring room.
Most of the curse content is if the man is explaining it to the screen, and this first-person narrative is actually mixed with many subjective elements.
Through the screen, we saw a novice mother who often "does bad things with good intentions", and she unconsciously felt sympathy and pity.
But what if the man lied? What if we see what she wants us to see?
What if it was all a scam from beginning to end?
The Curse has both positive and negative interpretation space. It depends on the audience’s understanding that loving mother/evil mother, saving women/sacrificing, breaking spells/unsealing evil spirits.
As early as the beginning of the film, "The Curse" implied by the running direction of the Ferris wheel and subway that "our thoughts quietly shape the world". The world is what you think.
The biggest controversy surrounding the curse is: bad luck.
Why did the audience feel unlucky, and even this topic was once hotly searched.
The first is the immersive fear brought by Chinese horror.
Japanese, Korean, European and American horror films are still separated by a layer, and ghosts that can only be hit by crossing the ocean cannot induce the sense of sight of domestic audiences. Taiwan Province horror movies are different. Everyone has the same root and the folk culture looks familiar.
There are two kinds of horror elements in the curse: foreign elements and Chinese elements. The former includes insects, antennae, secret fear and jumpscar; The latter includes folk customs, feudal superstitions and Chinese binding.
Although the former is scary, it will be forgotten after seeing nausea; It is the latter that really goes deep into the bone marrow and causes association.
Whispering the mantra "Fire Buddha Xiu Yi" and "Heart Sa Baa" which can be seen everywhere, strange cult totems can also find similarities in murals;
There are common spells and exorcism rituals in feudal times; There are also ancient altar offerings, swaying dim red lanterns, and hairy clay dolls in the ancestral hall, which can understand the essence of Chinese horror.
Have to sigh with emotion, Taiwan Province horror movies have a way of holding Chinese horror. It is a trend in recent years to combine folk elements with stories of evil spirits, and it is also an opportunity for Taiwan Province horror films to revive. The previous "Little Girl in Red" series and "Zongxie" also exploded for similar reasons.
Little girl in red 2
The second reason for bad luck is that the audience feels offended.
Watching traditional horror movies, we usually stand in the perspective of God and overlook the tricks of the characters in the film. Although the people in the film have no idea about their own situation, we know in advance that there are ghosts of the dead, and we treat them with a sense of superiority from an omniscient perspective.
"Curse" uses screen narration, which is equivalent to the audience standing in the second perspective and having an equal dialogue with the characters in the film, which is easy to produce immersion.
So when we read the spell after Ruonan at the end of the film, we found ourselves cheated and became a part of the curse.
When the audience realizes it, people will naturally feel annoyed. The subtext is "The director actually dragged us into it" and "The dummy actually lied to the real person".
This kind of "offense" to the audience is not new, and it has also appeared in other horror films before.
The most classic is the video of Sadako’s death in "The Ring of Midnight". People who watch the video will die strangely within 7 days, and if they pass it on to others, they can hand over bad luck.
There are also pirated videos in "Ghost Will Show". It is said that anyone who sees the death of Fusang (the film in the film) will be killed by a female ghost. Of course, the characters in the play saw it, and so did the audience outside the play.
In Truth or Adventure, there are also scenes in which videos are posted to video websites. In this way, the protagonist group allows more people to share the devil’s sanctions.
"Curse" should refer to the above films and set up a bridge that offends the audience. From the perspective of communication, this stunt is quite memorable, which is really conducive to the wide spread of the film.
Its essence is no different from old terrier’s "If you don’t forward it to X people within X hours, you will …", so you don’t have to feel unlucky or unlucky.
Don’t be afraid, there is also a curse letter in Legend of Wulin.
Returning to the film itself, The Curse is a Chinese horror film worth watching with acceptable quality.
The greatest advantages and disadvantages of The Curse are related to the screen narration.
On the one hand, with the help of large and small screens, it builds a horror experience with a strong sense of immersion and interaction, and all the scary pictures seem to happen in front of us.
On the other hand, in order to pursue the consistency of the form before and after, the film also added a screen where it is not necessary to use the screen narrative, which is not as good as the semi-screen narrative of the Female Ghost Bridge.
The Curse has brought many amazing highlights, but there is still a lot of room for improvement. Kevin Ko, a new generation director, also has ambitions and plans to devote himself to it.
When he was a student, he filmed a small-budget horror short film "Ghost Print", the first feature film was the slashing thriller "Fatal Party", and in his early works, there was a doomsday counterattack related to the doomsday element, which was enough to see his interest.
In the past ten years, he has not produced much, and he is out of the category of horror. The Adult 2, the Emergency of Getting Off the Bill and the Budaoxia, which were filmed in the mainland, can only be regarded as unsuccessful commercial comedies.
From the beginning of "The Curse", Kevin Ko returned to the old line of horror films. The win-win box office reputation of "Curse" gives him confidence to promote the follow-up films of the same type.
In addition to Curse 2, which features a girl and a boy, Kevin Ko also intends to open a "one-word movie universe" based on the real events in Taiwan Province.
Maybe, there will be the next explosion in the follow-up new films "Pickling", "Sleeping", "Even" and "Burial" of "One Word Movie Universe".
Note: Some pictures in this article are from Douban and the Internet. If there is any infringement, please contact us actively.
