Today we will talk about the Chinese Taiwanese movie "The Curse".
Title Incantation (2022).
Two days ago, on July 8, the Taiwanese horror film "The Curse" was released on Netflix, which was about four months after it was released in Taiwan.
Domestic audiences have also been looking forward to this movie for a long time. Last year, some good people named the four major horror movies in Asia in 2021, namely "Southern Witch", "Psychic ", "crying Sorrow" and "Curse", and then a group of followers added fuel to the fire. Originally, there were not many viewers who paid attention to horror films, and in recent years there have been only a handful of high-quality horror films. Now, the emergence of the "four major films of the year" has really whetted the audience's appetite after extensive marketing and fermentation.
In fact, the so-called Big Four itself is nonsense. Among them, "Southern Witch" is from 2020 and "Curse" is from 2022. Although there are loopholes in this gimmick, it is still enough to fool ordinary people.
I would like to give a warning to viewers who want to watch this film but have not yet seen it: do not pay attention to the spells, gestures, and charms in the film.
"Mantra" will use various methods to ask you to recite incantations and make gestures. No matter how affectionate the words in the video are, don't listen to them, don't read them, and don't do them.
Audiences who want to watch the movie should take mental precautions before watching the movie to avoid being offended by the director.
I will not include any pictures of spells, gestures, or charms in this article, so you can read with confidence.
If you rank the so-called four major horror movies, then "The Medium", "Southern Witch", "The Curse" and "Crying".
It is also shot in the pseudo-documentary way. "The Medium" is obviously much more sophisticated, and the audience can watch the movie immersed without worrying about being plotted by the director. "The Wizard" can let the audience understand folk culture, and it also looks very literary and artistic. "Crying" follows the route of a B-movie, which naturally loses points when placed in the context of a horror film.
"The Curse" has acceptable horror effects as a horror film, but it makes people feel very uncomfortable.
This film uses a pseudo-documentary shooting method. There are many excellent pseudo-documentary-style horror films, starting from the creator "Blair Witch", "Cloverfield ", " Unfriend ", " Death Video ", " Ghost Story " and many other excellent works. In recent years, Later, "Zhongxie" and " Kunchiyan " were the best.
When funds are tight, using the form of pseudo-documentary is a way to greatly enhance the horror atmosphere.
The audience's perspective can be limited to the limited range that the director wants to present, greatly reducing the difficulty of narrative and expanding the audience's unknown range.
Generally speaking, horror movies will make the audience feel chills. This chill comes either from the feeling of powerlessness against supernatural phenomena , or from the harm of vicious human nature.
The horror of this film is not that it makes the audience feel frightened, but that it makes the audience feel uneasy.
The story in "The Curse" is not new, it can even be said to be a very old-fashioned story. The result was a chill in the hearts of the audience.
This chill comes from the selfishness of the protagonist of the story on the one hand, and the ulterior motives of the director on the other.
It is said that "The Curse" is based on a true incident in 2005 in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, where a family of six were "possessed by evil spirits". To put it simply, the family did not seek medical treatment when they were sick, but instead became obsessed with praying to gods, and eventually they all died of torture.In a nutshell, a family of six believed they were possessed by spirits and all exhibited horrific symptoms of psychosis, turning to self-mutilation and other bizarre behaviors. They went without food for days, beat each other, burned their skin with incense, and ate feces. wait.
The filmmakers have never revealed details related to the incident, and although "Spell" is widely promoted as "based on a true story," there are actually no reliable sources for the incident.
The plot of this film revolves around an ancient curse. Six years ago, the heroine Li Ruonan and her companions ventured into a remote mountain village to investigate local folk customs, which resulted in a curse.
Those who took part in the adventure were either killed or injured. People around them also suffered accidents frequently, and future generations are not immune either.
Li Ruonan re-adopted his biological daughter Duoduo. In order to solve the curse on his daughter, he invited the audience to help share the curse...
The audiences who can follow this "Curse" are experienced and experienced movie fans. I believe that after watching it, everyone felt offended rather than scared.
In order to give enough respect to horror movies, I specially started watching it after 0 o'clock in the dead of night. I felt the ritual of watching the movie, but after watching it, I felt like I was cheated.
Since the film is a horror film, you can scare me, but you can't lie to me.
Just like the leader of Hunyuan Xingyi Tai Chi said, "Young people don't respect martial arts, so come and cheat! Attack me!" The movie sets a trap for the audience from the very beginning, without giving everyone a way to react. The timing is a bit like a one-shot deal.
The film "The Curse" itself does not have any novel techniques. The clips that appear in the film are formulas that are often used in various horror mockumentaries and have been confirmed to be effective. The biggest innovation and criticism of this film is that it forces the audience into the story and experiences the curse together.
The director arranged for Li Ruonan to speak directly to the camera, allowing the audience to directly participate in this large-scale online curse event.
On the surface, this treatment can enhance the persuasiveness of the film, as if the audience can personally participate in this adventure. But if you think about it carefully, it will make people feel very uncomfortable. Once the audience realizes the truth, it will only become more uneasy and fall into the trap set by the director.
The trailer and movie of "The Curse" set the film's nature at the beginning. The film emphasizes spiritualism . The core is that what you believe in is what the world is, which means that this world is based on human consciousness.
Then use two visual residual examples of Ferris wheel and subway to support yourself.
What we have accepted since childhood is Marxist philosophy, namely dialectical materialism and historical materialism. The world is essentially material, and matter is not subject to human will. Matter is primary and consciousness is secondary. Consciousness is the function of the human brain and the reflection of the objective material world in the human brain.
And "The Curse" secretly changed the concept at the beginning, inverting the subjective and objective cause and effect, and set the stage for the subsequent plot development.
Director Ke Mengrong is an expert in visual residual effects. In addition to the two examples at the beginning, he also uses a lot of visual residual effects throughout the film.
For example, when a spell picture is played continuously for a long time, a single Chinese character flashes continuously in the middle of white text on a black background, forcing the audience to focus on the center of the screen. Then the film immediately switches to full white without warning, and the original spell in the middle of the screen will immediately appear in the audience's eyes.
At this time, the audience is no longer watching a horror movie, but playing a psychological game designed by the director. If you don't know the visual residual effect, some people may really think that they have been cursed.
I remember that when I was in elementary school, I personally experienced "bad luck" similar to the sharing curse.
At that time, a saying suddenly spread in the school that everyone would receive a letter in their home mailbox without a header or signature. There are thousands of words written in the letter. The general meaning is that the person who receives the letter must manually copy the letter 10 times within a few days and then send it to 10 different people. If he does not follow the instructions, he will be cursed. The family All kinds of misfortunes will happen.
I also found a similar letter in my mailbox at home. It was written in elementary school fonts and had the same content spreading curses. I didn't take it seriously at the time, turned around and threw the letter away, and continued to play on the eight-bit computer...
I never studied philosophy when I was a child, but at least I knew that 10 penalty copies would definitely not be as fun as a game console.
Don’t think that just because Li Ruonan is a heroine or a mother, she is a good person or what she does is right. Li Ruonan's purpose from beginning to end is to draw more people into the water.
If someone is deceived without warning, the last moment of the film will definitely feel more uncomfortable than eating a fly.
Isn’t the crystal cave more beautiful than the godmother?
Li Ruonan tried his best to let more people share the curse.
She first kept emphasizing that the godmother could not see, giving the audience a strong psychological hint. Then she destroyed all the guide boys and mirrors that trapped the godmother, and even blindfolded herself, and then started to act. The purpose of the demon is to release the godmother to harm others.
Li Ruonan’s argument should be very popular in places where superstition and fraud are prevalent. But if you put it in a foreign country where the language is difficult to understand, others will not be able to understand the words and will just treat it as a curiosity; if you put it in China, everyone believes in pragmatism and does not do anything bad and is not afraid of ghosts knocking on the door. Since this so-called god cannot bless me, Then I still believe him.
carefully arranges psychological hints and visual residues,
perfectly avoids materialism and pragmatism.
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