This article was first published WeChat: Mirror Entertainment (ID: jingxiangyule)
Author: Ashley
April can be called the "Month of Suspense Films".
From "Mirage" and "Tuner", which have double harvested at the box office, to "The Game of Desire", "When the Prayer Ends", and "Code Whisperer", which were just released yesterday, suspense movies were released in a group in April, especially imported films.
Taking stock of the successful suspense films in recent years, I have to mention "The Invisible Guest". As a small and medium-sized production cost of the batch film (imported buyout film), in the first day of release of only 4% of the film, 7 million box office, with the Douban 8.7 points of word of mouth all the way counterattack, and finally won more than 170 million box office.
The "Mirage" created by the same director was released at the end of March with the aura of the sequel to "The Invisible Guest", and the response was also good, with a box office of 106 million and a Douban score of 7.8 points as of press time.
Judging from the data, suspense films have successfully opened up the market and are even expected to become a new outlet.
A mixture of types, innovation wins
"When the Prayer Ends", which was released yesterday, is based on the novel of the same name by the famous Japanese mystery writer Keigo Higashino, which alone is enough to attract audiences to buy tickets to enter the theater.
From "White Night" and "The Dedication of Suspect X" to "When the Prayer Ends", the filmization of Keigo Higashino's novel can be said to be a great victory, and the Douban score of the film "When the Prayer Ends" reached 8.0, which is better than 87% of suspense films.
In contrast, Guo Tao's domestic suspense movie "Desire Game" is not satisfactory. Despite the help of stars such as Guo Tao, Zhang Zifeng, Mei Ting, and Fan Wei, the Douban score was only 3.3 points, and word of mouth hit the street.
Another "Whisperer" has not yet been rated, from the starring, poster and plot summary, it is undoubtedly a domestic bad film.
As far as the three suspense films released yesterday are concerned, the strength of domestic suspense films is obviously inferior to that of imported suspense films.
As the most successful domestic suspense film in recent years, "Detective Chinatown 2" has a Douban score of 6.7 points at the box office of 3.398 billion, while the Douban score of imported suspense films such as "Invisible Guest" and "Tuner" is above 8 points.
I have to say that the grasp of domestic suspense movies on the genre is still poor.
"The Tuner" was born out of a 14-minute short film, and the creators put a lot of thought into the adaptation and expansion of the story: weakening cultural differences, adding a thrilling effect to the absurd story, and of course, multiple reversal narratives.
As the box office dark horse of Indian films in 2018, "The Tuner" won more than $10 million in India at a cost of $4.6 million upon release; after its release last year, the film immediately jumped to the third place in the IMDb Indian Film TOP250 of all time, with a rating of 8.6. Rotten Tomatoes has a freshness rating of 100%, and the domestic Douban score is at 8.4, which has been high.
In addition to its impressive achievements, The Tuner also shows Chinese audiences a different side of Indian cinema. In addition to inspirational, song and dance, and realistic issues, suspense films are also an indispensable and important part of Indian cinema. Looking at the top ten of IMDb's Indian film TOP250, in addition to "The Tuner", "Contest", "Na Yakan", "Ecstasy", "Black Friday", "Glitz Shackles" are all genres related to suspense, thriller and crime, and are surprisingly the favorite genres in India. "The Tuner" is also a successful business case polished under this Indian film system.
The successful expansion of the 14-minute short film into a 139-minute feature film combines the original creative and story framework with references to various genres.
A lot of people say they saw other movies in The Tuner. The first 30 minutes are the familiar Indian-inspired song and dance romance; the next 45 minutes are an extension of the original short film; the next 45 minutes are a black crime drama, which is a three-dimensional design of the characters and sublimates the theme of the film, with the shadow of "Ice Storm"; the last 15 minutes become "Philharmonic City".
Another suspense film, "Mirage", also has familiar "routines": the same structure of "Black Hole Frequency", the butterfly effect of "Butterfly Effect", the unsolved reincarnation of "Horror Cruise", the parallel time and space of "The Night the Comet Came"...
Whether it is for "The Tuner" or "Mirage", the works of the predecessors are not brainless copying and plagiarism, nor are they simple handling and superposition, but the mixture and rebirth of types.
Break through the genre convention, integrate the genre elements, and pay attention to commerciality while not forgetting the pursuit of artistry. This is worth learning from.
Reversing is cool for a while, and it is always cool to be reversed
The mainland release time of "The Invisible Guest" is more than 8 months later than that in Spain. In the case of mainland audiences completely unfamiliar with Spanish actors, relying on excellent word of mouth to counterattack, even surpassing the American science fiction movie "Spider-Man: Homecoming" in the same period.
Why are we increasingly fond of suspense films?
The main story line throughout "The Invisible Guest" is not a car accident escape + body dumping in the dense forest, but a dialogue in a closed room.
The plot is reversed again and again, and the ending cannot be guessed until the last second. All kinds of details are handled very well, almost zero bugs, it can be said that the audience was "deceived" for more than 100 minutes.
And "Mirage" is more hilarious than "Invisible Guest", the suspense has been upgraded, the characters and clues are more complex, and the first Douban hot review is like this:
This is especially true of the suspenseful "god film" "The Tuner" from India. According to statistics, the film has as many as 52 reversal designs, and the last second from the beginning to the end is advanced in the reversal.
"Five minutes a climax, ten minutes a reversal, each reversal point is like a cat facing Schrödinger, not to witness it with your own eyes, never knowing what will happen next."
To sum up, the reversal is cool for a while, and the reversal has always been cool.
The charm of the reversal lies in the double pleasure of physiology and psychology.
Different from the "brainless" and relaxed in youth films and romance films, the process of watching suspense films is like playing werewolf killing, tense and exciting. In the face of high-end players with strict logic, you must always concentrate and keep watching and thinking in sync with them. A good suspense film, everywhere foreshadowing, layer by layer reversal, when learning the truth will give people a feeling of stripping away the cocoon.
When the plot is constantly reversed, the audience also has a sense of conquest with an IQ crushed: is there such an operation? Suspense films are meant to tell you: Do you think what you think is what you think?
With the ups and downs of the plot, the audience may have scalp numbness and goosebumps, and this series of reactions will be lifted when the mystery is revealed, and the most painful and relieved.
Uncharted territory has a fatal appeal to people.
As Lagwan, the director of "The Tuner," said, "A good suspense movie is unpredictable, you think something is going to happen, and what happens next is completely different from what you expected, from beginning to end, it is unexpected." ”
Consumption upgrade, quality upgrade
Obviously, while domestic audiences are upgrading their consumption, their requirements for quality are also higher.
The consumption upgrade of the audience is reflected in the prosperity of the domestic film market.
Since 2006, the box office of Chinese films has increased dramatically. In 2012, China became the world's second largest box office market, and the gap with the North American market is gradually narrowing. In 2017, China's box office revenue has reached $8.6 billion, second only to North America's $11.1 billion. In 2018, the national box office scale exceeded 60 billion, becoming the world's largest film market, which is the first time in recent years that a region outside North America has won the global film market championship.
In addition, the diversification of film themes and the diversification of genre paradigms have become more and more obvious. Taking 2017 as an example, the top ten domestic films in the annual box office include comedies, action films, fantasy films, romance films and other genres. Action movies such as "Wolf Warrior 2" and comedy "Shy Iron Fist" became the biggest winners of the year.
Consumption upgrading has promoted quality upgrading, and the diversified development of the film market is precisely to meet the increasingly discerning audience.
On the one hand, the audience's requirements for the quality, artistry and ideology of the film are also constantly improving.
If in the past, the audience only used the theater as an entertainment place and did not attach much importance to content, then today's situation has changed greatly, and the audience is not so easy to be fooled.
The "big IP" and "traffic star" have failed, excessive marketing publicity has caused people to be disgusted, and the audience has higher expectations for the content of the movie.
On the other hand, the focus of the public's viewing purpose is becoming increasingly prominent, and the need for individualization is more prominent.
According to the "China Film Audience Market Research Report 2017", the average age of Chinese film audiences is 24 years old, 73.6% are under 25 years old, and 86.4% have a university degree or above. Audiences of different ages and backgrounds will take the initiative to understand and actively choose more suitable films before watching movies.
2019 has already passed a quarter of it. The domestic film market has gradually returned to normal after experiencing the carnival of the Spring Festival stalls. In February, "The Wandering Earth" kicked off the prelude to domestic hard science fiction films; in March, the Oscar best film "Green Book" and the Berlin International Film Festival-winning film "Long Days" accompanied the audience through the off-season; and in April, the imported suspense films "Mirage" and "Tuner" continued to ferment. Considering the continuous maturity of the audience and the development trend of the industry, it is not difficult to infer that the next thing that can detonate the domestic market is the genre film with good reputation and good sales.