2020 is definitely a big year for suspense dramas, and major platforms have launched self-made suspense dramas.
"The Hidden Corner", "In the End", "Missing Persons", "White Moonlight", "Skyscraper" and other dramas have come one after another.
The reputation of "The Silent Truth" broadcast on September 16 exploded, and 160,000 people on Douban gave a high score of 9.2, which can be called the king of suspense dramas this year.
Everyone sighed that the domestic suspense drama finally had that taste!
In late September, another suspense drama began broadcasting immediately after "The Silent Truth".
"I Met Him in Hong Kong"
"I Met Him in Hong Kong" is a new drama of a cool suspense theater, which has previously broadcast "White Moonlight", "Missing Persons", "Girls That Summer", "Thorn" and other dramas.
Different from these dramas, the drama focuses on suspenseful youth, so many people think that the title of the play is a youth film, but they do not know that it also has a title of "I Live in Hong Kong X House".
The drama is adapted from the hot post of Douban netizen "Waiting for Jojo", with the real landmarks and cases of Hong Kong as the introduction.
It tells the story of Li Jia, a young man who went to Hong Kong to study in high streets, Repulse Bay, Wan Chai and other places to find a rental house, and his close friends Zhang Chacha and Shi Cheng experienced various thrilling but touching stories.
In order to restore the customs and customs of Hong Kong, so that the taste of Hong Kong is full, and the audience can get a glimpse of the whole picture of Hong Kong Island, and can also appreciate the unknown style of Hong Kong, the drama was filmed in Hong Kong.
The director is Ju Xingmao, who has directed the "Soul Ferry" series.
The main actors are all handsome and beautiful women full of youth.
The male protagonist is "Big-Eyed Brother" Zeng Shunxi, who debuted as a group and then began to participate in TV series.
More famous is the new version of "Yitian Slaughtering Dragon", in which he plays Zhang Wujie, this time he changed the sunny and warm image to challenge the dual personality role of "one person and two sides".
In the play, the male protagonist Li Jia, played by him, suffers from family mental illness, is introverted and kind in the early stage, and will have a contrast in the later stage of "blackening" of his personality.
This requires a high level of emotional explosion and acting skills of the actors, so I am still looking forward to Zeng Shunxi's interpretation.
The heroine is Yan Zhuoling, known as the Q version of Xue Kaiqi.
He has starred in works such as "The Great Hunt" and "Six Lane Cafe", and has been nominated for the Golden Horse Award and the Golden Film Award for double actress with his wonderful performance of "Crazy Dance Party".
Because she is a Hong Konger, the female advocate fork she plays in the play is very in line with the human setting, and she has a big grin and is weird.
Especially speaking of the pure Gangpu, and then to the gentle and shy male protagonist, the "Hong Kong woman" is full of temperament.
In addition, there are veteran actors such as Wu Qihua, Kuroko, and Li Lizhen.
And Wu Qihua also played Zhang Wuji, the new and old versions of Zhang Wujie met in the play is also a surprise, for this netizen also made an emoji for the two people.
"I Met Him in Hong Kong" also achieved good results, and once landed first in the popularity list of film and television dramas on the whole network after it was broadcast.
The male protagonist of the play, Li Jia, has a family history of mental illness, and his mother and brother both suffered from schizophrenia at the age of 24.
Therefore, the male protagonist chose to study psychiatry and went to Hong Kong for graduate school after graduating from undergraduate, the purpose of which is to unlock the "invisible bomb" in his genes that may explode at any time.
After coming to Hong Kong, the male protagonist lived in a house on the high street of Hong Kong under the introduction of the female protagonist.
This building used to be a leprosy hospital, but it was later converted into a church by the British, and it was temporarily requisitioned by the Japanese as a torture room, and many people died very "unclean".
This place exists in reality, and the haunted high street incident in Hong Kong is one of the top ten supernatural events in Hong Kong.
When fiction and reality overlap, that sense of fear speaks for itself.
And the neighbors on this floor are very strange, the female owner has been telling the male owner to stay at home at night and not to run around, and as a result, the night of check-in began to be strange.
The black cat that appeared on the balcony, the red leather ball that rolled out from under the bed, the woman who appeared in the dream.
What secrets are hidden in this seemingly unremarkable room?
Faced with various strange puzzles, the male protagonist began to pursue the truth.
As a suspense drama that focuses on suspense and youth, in addition to the novel genre, the drama also performs very well in other aspects.
The first is to create a suspenseful horror atmosphere in place, with a strong Hong Kong drama style.
I have to say that the director is worthy of being a giant Xingmao who has filmed the phenomenon-level spiritual network drama "Soul Ferry", and his control of the suspense atmosphere is very sophisticated.
From the very beginning of "I Met Him in Hong Kong", the director has pulled the suspenseful thriller atmosphere to the fullest.
For example, at the beginning of the series, the male protagonist who went to Hong Kong to study saw the female protagonist of the skateboard outside the car window in the bus, and the next second the female protagonist's skateboard slammed through the paper money on the ground.
One of them flew up and glued directly to the car window next to the male protagonist, and the camera gave a close-up of the coin at this time, and the scalp of the person who saw it was numb on the spot.
And the play is also full of various thriller elements.
Sudden knocking at the door in the middle of the night, the black figure of the corridor, the "corpse parking space" in the parking lot, the aunt who burns paper money.
Coupled with the gloomy background music, the sense of horror is amplified in all directions, making people feel like returning to the 90s Hong Kong ghost films.
No wonder netizens commented that they did not expect the mainland to shoot such a "Hong Kong-style suspense" drama with a full flavor.
At the same time, in terms of atmosphere creation, the camera language in the play is also in place.
The play uses a lot of long shots, overhead shots and close-up shots to create an eerie sense of déjà vu, giving people a ubiquitous tension and depression.
For example, at the beginning, when the male protagonist walked into the 5A01 household on the high street, the camera swept through the faces of each resident, and without saying much, the strangeness of the residents and the environment on this floor was displayed.
When entering the underground parking, first a close-up shot, then the camera began to shake, and the last long shot slowly pushed into the depths, and the mysterious suspense of the parking lot was instantly bursting, very stunning.
There are also a large number of symmetrical streets and stairs looking down on the picture, which makes the picture very strange, not only full of illusion but also depressing.
The second is that the plot directly hits reality, and explores social topics under the shell of suspense.
With the broadcast of various types of suspense dramas, we can find that the current suspense dramas are not simply telling the detection of cases, but more are brought into social topics.
"The Hidden Corner" deals with the problem of teenagers, and "White Moonlight" tells the story of women's growth in the face of marriage.
The show focuses on a special group of people, the mentally ill.
As the male protagonist, his mother and brother carry psychotic genes, both of whom are schizophrenic and crazy at the age of 24, and in the face of this situation, he has been committed to studying the triggers of the disease.
His life is a countdown every day, and he didn't even dare to fall in love before 24, and it is for this reason that he pays special attention to those who are mentally abnormal.
Like Aunt Lan, the woman who went crazy and hanged herself in the first incident, he wondered why a normal person would suddenly go crazy.
After investigation, he found that she had gone crazy because of the death of her son and the bullying of the neighbor's man, and a further investigation would find that the root cause was from people's indifference.
Aunt Lan was bullied, the neighbors chose silence, Aunt Lan's son was sick, and the neighbors chose to ignore it, precisely because of their invisible indifference that pushed Aunt Lan into the bottomless abyss.
And how many such people are there in our lives?
Presenting social issues with a suspenseful shell is what the show really wants to explore.
As the professor in the play said, "The life of a mentally ill person must be a distorted life?" ”。
Of course, the play also has very obvious shortcomings, as a suspense drama, the story is too thin, the reversal is not exciting enough.
The series takes the form of a unit drama, with two story lines going on at the same time.
One is the strange events encountered by the male protagonist in his study life, and the other is the observation and research carried out by his professor on the male protagonist.
The first story, "Cat Food", used 5 episodes, which is a bit too long for a short drama. And the story of each episode is relatively simple, and there is no interrelated and complex interlocking storyline.
The motivation of the male protagonist's detective is not very strong, and in the process of finding the truth, many times it is reasoned through the male protagonist's narrative, and there is a lack of reliable clues to give support.
For example, in the second story "Green Nails", the male protagonist found the perpetrator in three strokes and five divisions, and there was no clue and reversal throughout the whole process, which was very boring.
At present, the Douban score of "I Met Him in Hong Kong" is 7.2, and according to the development of the plot, it is predicted that the score will decline.
As a suspense drama that followed the launch of "The Silent Truth", this quality level can be described as hanging.
However, for the audience who likes youth suspense dramas, they can chase it and use it to pass the time.
Piglet, | in the Editorial Department of Bluestone Films
This article is the original content of Bluestone Movie, please do not reprint it in any form without authorization!