Phenomenal Chinese horror film "The Curse" is finally available on Netflix!
Before watching this movie, there are two things that must be reminded:
1. Movie fans with religious beliefs or idealism should be careful before entering;
2. Movie fans with trypophobia should be careful before entering.
Prior to this, movie fans had referred to "The Medium" co-produced by Thailand and South Korea, "Nan Wu " produced by Malaysia, "Crying Sad " and "The Curse" from Taiwan, China, as "Asia". Horror movie "Quartet".
After the popularity of the first three films, the film "The Curse" has become the most anticipated Chinese horror film in recent years. As soon as the movie
was released online, it quickly aroused discussion. Not only did it top Douban's real-time popular video list, it was also trending on Weibo with the topic # curse bad luck#.
So, is "The Curse" bad luck or not, and is it scary?
The film is adapted from the uprising incident that occurred in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, China.
The so-called Qiji, which means the upper body of the god, is more popular in Taiwan, Chaoshan area and so on.
In 2005, Kaohsiung, Taiwan, there were a family of six named Wu.
Initially, the younger sister in the family claimed that she was possessed by the "Third Prince" and told her family that her eldest sister in Taipei was in danger, so her mother took her back to her hometown.
The eldest sister who returned to her hometown always dreamed of being sexually assaulted. Soon after, she claimed that she was being possessed by "Guanyin" and began to beat herself.
Her family accompanied her to Wuzhishan to meditate, but it was no use.
And the whole family began to claim to be possessed by gods such as the "Jade Emperor", "Queen Mother" and "Seven Fairies".
The six members of the Wu family then began to attack each other.
They beat each other with god tablets and crutches, burned each other with burning incense, spread salt and rice, fed each other with feces, and applied urine on each other, saying it was used to drive away evil spirits. They only drank talisman water to survive until the eldest sister was killed. starve.
Of course, in the materialistic world, they can't really be possessed by gods.
According to the speculation of many netizens, the family may have become insane due to incest..
The film "The Curse" just borrows the shell of "Qi Ji". The content of the film is not directly related to this incident. It only shows the horror of Qi Ji in occasional horrifying scenes, such as an aunt who directly uses a red-hot soldering iron to Insert into mouth.
On the surface , the movie "Curse" tells a story of maternal love.
The video is divided into two lines.
The first line is that the heroine Li Ruonan (played by Cai Genyan) picks up her daughter "Duoduo" Chen Letong (played by Huang Xinting) from the foster home.
But since Duoduo returned home, strange things have continued, and a curse has followed.
Another line is that six years ago, Li Ruonan, together with her boyfriend A Dong (played by Lin Jinglun) and his companion A Yuan (played by Wen Qingyu), went to the authentic land of evil spirits in the countryside for a field exploration. The three of them eventually died. Cursed.
Although Li Ruonan was able to escape because she did not enter the tunnel, the curse has been with her for six years, and people close to her died tragically for no reason one after another.
The evil god’s next target seems to be her daughter. In order to protect her daughter, Li Ruonan had to return to the forbidden place.
No matter which line, the pictures used are composed of DV, mobile phone, driving recorder and other shooting materials.
As the most popular pseudo-documentary format for horror films in recent years, the film "The Curse" combines the eerieness of the countryside at night, the crampedness of the tunnel space, and the mystery of folk customs to present a very complete horror vision.
Although the film is edited at the intersection of two lines, it is inevitable that the connection points are not close enough and become slightly confusing.
Unlike "The Medium" and "Southern Witches" which created gaps in content and explanation that left the audience unable to fully enjoy themselves, the film "The Curse" is very willing to dig holes and is never ambiguous about filling them.
The two most typical suspense in the whole film are "authentic video " and "face of the big black Buddha ".
"Authentic Video" is the visual suspense that has been "marketed" from the middle of the film; the face of the Buddha Mother is the ultimate suspense of the entire "Curse".
It is too difficult to satisfy the audience with these two suspenses.
In ordinary horror movies, they are often made to be confusing.
But in "The Curse", their revelations are not only very clear, but also closely related to each other, fully able to satisfy the audience's imagination.
The entire story of the film begins with the unveiling of the face of the Mother Buddha in the tunnel.
During this process, the film produced excellent sound effects.
For example, after A Dong revealed the face of the Buddha Mother, he answered "What is my name", which is one of the most bizarre moments in the film.
The voice when he answered was as loud as the abyss, which not only matched the true appearance of the face of the Buddha Mother, but also proved that he was already in trance.
A Dong
In addition to the core suspense, the key to the establishment of the film "Mantra" lies in the use of Southeast Asian esoteric religious symbols and mantras.
Director Ke Mengrong once said that although the religious references in the film come from real Yunnan religion, the religion itself, as well as symbols, gestures, etc., are all his own creations.
Ke Mengrong
The most important mantra "Fire Buddha cultivates one, the heart is sad and hums" is actually the homophonic pronunciation of "Misfortune and blessing depend on each other, life and death are famous" in Hokkien .
And the red cloth covering the face of the Buddha in the video has the words "Death and Life are Famous" written on it.
Therefore, the essence of "Mantra", which comes from real events and real religions, is still a relatively complete fiction.
This kind of fiction has a strong sense of reality for the audience because the director played a lot of tricks of psychological suggestion.
At the beginning of the film, the director showed images of a rotating Ferris wheel and a train running in a tunnel.
The rotation of the Ferris wheel and the direction of the train have not changed, but in the continuous narration of "left, right, left, right... use your thoughts to control it", both the Ferris wheel and the train seem to have changed. It has become a two-way movement, and their original direction of movement is no longer important.
It's like you have been staring at a simple word. Over time, the word will become extremely unfamiliar, and even the strokes will begin to dismember and scatter.
This kind of hint runs through the whole film, and its key is "pros and cons". Through "pros and cons", it defeats the audience's common sense and defense, making everyone believe in the weird design in the film.
For example, the sentence "Do you believe in blessing?"
Blessing is actually a curse.
For example, the hand gesture of the seal is to turn the palms outward, but the film uses gestures to tell the audience that the general seal is actually the palms are turned in...
So, will the maternal love we see also have a complete expression? , what about the complete opposite? The opposite of
, is just like a bug crawling in maternal love?
With such positive and negative ideas, the director set many important details in "Curse" that are difficult to detect.
For example, after Duoduo returned home, she suddenly knocked the stationery box to the ground. The stationery on the ground was in the shape of Tantric symbols; Duoduo said that there were "bad things" on the ceiling, and Chen Ruonan said "bad things" "After being led out of the house, a dark figure immediately clung to the wall and returned to its original place; in the authentic video, when the mirrors, walls, offerings, etc. collapsed, countless ghostly hands suddenly poked out from the cramped space...
These details Just like the "idea" of the film, together with the conspicuous images of bugs, hair, toads and naked people, they jointly shape the terrifying world in the film that makes the body itchy and mentally uncomfortable.
The evil spirit also comes from the director's borrowing of past Asian horror techniques, such as writing runes all over the body.
This technique comes from Guangdong director Gui Zhihong's 1980 Hong Kong film "Evil", and Japanese director Kobayashi Masaki 's 1964 film " Kaidan ".
"Evil"
"Ghost Story"
Back then, the inspiration for "Evil" should have come from "Ghost Story", while "Curse" may have transcended "Evil" and was a direct variation of "Ghost Story".
The film "Ghost Story" has four stories in total. "Curse" is related to the third story "Mu Er Yoshiichi".
In "No Ear Fangyi", the young monk Fangyi wrote "Prajnaparamita Heart Sutra" all over his body in order to ward off ghosts and evil spirits.
But he accidentally missed his ears, so his ears were torn off by the ghost general of the Japanese Taira clan.
"Ghost Story"
Gui Zhihong's "Evil" did not involve the most important binaural plot in the story, but director Ke Mengrong picked it up in "Curse".
In the video, the villagers cut off part of the girl's ears to sacrifice to the Buddha. The heroine also returns to the statue of the Buddha after cutting off other people's ears.
Although the film only talks about cutting the flesh when it comes to sacrifice and does not mention cutting the ears, everyone defaults to cutting the ears, which shows that "The Curse" is indeed a deliberate tribute to "The Strange Story".
In addition to ideas, details, and runes, the director also specially designed a "visual persistence" trick near the end of the film. The
symbol is placed in the center of the screen, and the runes spread out in circles with the symbol as the center. In the center of the symbol, the origin of the Big Black Buddha is explained one by one in red letters.
The audience had to stare at the red letter until the end of the red letter and the screen immediately turned white.
At this moment, the audience’s eyes are filled with this core symbol of Tantric religion.
Please stare at the red letters in the middle. After reading, you can look at the ceiling
to remember the symbols, chant the mantras, and look at the face of the Buddha. Through "one click and three links", the film uses the heroine to guide the audience and finally completes the dialogue. A curse for all viewers.
However, things are not as simple as .
Recall that the heroine is always trying desperately to shape her mother image.
In the end, if the audience really agrees to her request, it will only be because of maternal love.
But in this process, are there many things that are difficult to understand?
For example, why does the heroine feed her daughter food when she obviously can’t eat?
For example, why did she cut off other people's ears instead of her own?
Why did the heroine go to Yunnan to meet the great monk when she was pregnant?
And at the end, the heroine has obviously covered her eyes and did not see the face of the Buddha. Why is she still nodding like a fool at the altar?
...
All the scenes in the film come from video editing, and all the video materials are in the hands of the heroine . Naturally, she can cut them however she wants.
If the material she wants is not available, then she can shoot it herself to supplement it.
In this case, the editing problems that were originally criticized by videos seem to be reasonably explained..
Therefore, maternal love is probably just an illusion, a deliberate selection of the heroine for the audience.
In fact, , what the heroine really wants the audience to share is not the curse on her daughter, but the curse on herself.
At the end of the film, the heroine kowtows to the Buddha, which is probably just a show, and the entire film becomes a long and huge narrative conspiracy.
The surface and the inside of the film are probably two completely opposite stories.
This also reflects the concept that ideas have been emphasizing since the beginning of the film to shape the world, and that both positive and negative ideas can shape .
In addition, director Ke Mengrong has released six deleted clips. Is it possible that deletions like
are also one of the ways to interact with the film?
is the clip deleted by the director, which is exactly the clip deleted by the heroine.
These six clips are not scary in appearance, and the reason for deletion is that they have an obvious destructive effect on the heroine's plan.
For example, the section " official will start " that the audience is most looking forward to.
When the heroine and her daughter met Ksitigarbha Bodhisattva patrolling the streets to clear the way for them, the heroine and her daughter suddenly noticed something and took a closer look at them.
The heroine got up and wanted to go back, but the second general (a total of three people, the general increased and turned into a red and blue one) kept approaching them.
At this time, the daughter is not actually possessed by the evil spirit, so the official is obviously targeting the heroine.
This proves that it is the heroine who is really possessed at this time.
In order to dispel the audience's doubts, the heroine (director) cut this section out of the entire film.
Therefore, the "fourth wall" in the film "The Curse" has been completely broken from the inside out, and the interaction between the film and the audience has almost reached the extreme, thus presenting a true sense of immersion.
Of course, even if we follow the mantra and see the face of the Buddha, the movie is just a movie after all, so there is no need to feel sorry for it.
text: County Hao
