In recent days, a zombie movie, Crying Sorrow, has sparked a huge discussion.
On the one hand, as a rare zombie theme in Chinese films, the film has aroused high expectations from the audience.
Unfortunately, the higher the expectation, the greater the disappointment, after the film streaming is online, the audience finishes watching the direct call, just this?
Many critics believe that in addition to the emphasis on taste, the plot of this film is almost useless, disgusting for the sake of disgust.
On the other hand, due to the position problem of the movie, it has been criticized by netizens for carrying private goods, and they have questioned whether they should be removed from the shelves.
But whether it is the scolding outside the scene or the controversy of the film itself, it can show the audience's disappointment with the film.
However, "Crying Sorrow" is not the first Controversial Chinese zombie movie.
As early as 2012, Taiwanese cult film director Qian Renhao made a zombie movie "Z-108 Abandoned City".
The film is the first real zombie film in Taiwan Province, the scale is also not small, according to director Qian Renhao's self-statement, when the film was released in Hong Kong that year, it needed to be cut out of nine plots to be divided into restricted release, which shows the boldness of this film.
However, after the release of this film, the box office did not meet expectations, and the reputation was relatively polarized, but some cult film fans believed that it was full of ambition as an exploration of a Chinese zombie movie.
In this issue of "Forgotten Cult Films", let's talk about this movie -
Z-108 Abandoned City
Zombie 108
The film was shot in 2011 and was shortlisted for the Brussels Fantasy Film Festival, known as the "Oscars of horror films".
Director and screenwriter Qian Renhao, a director active in the field of horror thrillers, came to prominence in 2010 with a rock gangster film "Chaos Heavenly Troupe", and in recent years he has developed in the mainland and directed the blockbuster suspense thriller film "Beijing 81 II".
In 2011, Qian Renhao wrote the script for "Z-108 Abandoned City", but he could not get the investment for a long time. Zombie movies themselves are relatively niche, not to mention the decline of Taiwan's film industry after the millennium, there are not many pure commercial films, not to mention letting investors invest money to invest in a niche cult film.
Reluctantly, Qian Renhao posted crowdfunding information on social media, and finally raised 8.25 million Taiwan dollars, plus some donations from all walks of life raised by the director, and finally put together a cost of 10 million Taiwan dollars to produce this "Z-108 Abandoned City".
Due to the limited production budget, most of the main actors used in the film are friends, and the heroine of the film, Yao Caiying, is a model and is herself a third-line actress with low fame.
Relatively more famous is other roles in the film, including Du Yuhang, a martial arts actor who participated in the "Ip Man" series, Gao Jie, a powerful actor, Tai Bao, an action actor from a family class, actor Lou Xuexian, the late artist Rong Xiang, who is both a star and a producer, and director Qian Renhao himself also played the most heinous villain role in the film.
The film mobilized thousands of extras, filmed in Taipei's most prosperous Ximending neighborhood, filmed in only fourteen days, the film also created a record for Taiwan's local films, from group performances, production to funds, are independent production films completed by netizens.
Speaking of the story, this film has the meaning of obvious tribute to European and American zombie movies, and many plots in the film can see the shadow of many classic zombie movies, and the whole film can be called:
Zombies make a big fuss about Ximending.
The "Z" in the title refers to both "Zombie" and the number "108" represents the story of the abandoned area that took place in 108 hours.
In addition, the area code of the filming location Ximending is also 108, so the title of the film has a pun, alluding to the fact that the Ximending area was reduced to a doomsday abandoned city after the fall of zombies.
The film opens with a pseudo-documentary background introduction:
A scientist won a medical award for discovering a new type of human gene, but he was not satisfied, and he also illegally used the human body to do experiments, did not want the experiment to have an accident, and did not expect to fail, he often drank too much.
As a result of a drunk driving accident that killed a family of three, he was stripped of his license and separated from his wife. Frustrated, he accidentally spilled a test tube filled with "new human genes" and flowed into the sewers, contaminating the local water source.
After some people drank it, their bodies mutated and began to eat their own kind like crazy, and the zombie disaster began.
The film officially begins, the heroine Linda wakes up from a coma, she originally drove through the Ximending neighborhood with her husband and young daughter, and fell into a coma.
When she woke up, she found that her daughter was not around, and Linda, who was anxious to find her daughter, got out of the car and found that the city center in front of her had been devastated, the original bustling road had become empty, and the shopping mall was empty, as if the whole city had become an empty city.
Just when Linda is confused, a group of zombies find her in the supermarket and begin to frantically hunt down Linda.
Linda found her lost daughter and wanted to get back to her car and drive away, but she did not expect that her husband had also turned into a zombie, and linda, who was terrified, had to take her daughter along the road to escape.
Just as a car passed by, the desperate Linda hurriedly stopped the driver with her daughter and got into the car from an unknown source.
At the same time, in a nightclub in Ximending, the black boss is taking a group of little brothers here to take drugs.
The black boss has just arrested two foreign boys, and the other party came to the nightclub managed by the black boss to sell powder privately, and after being caught by the black boss, he is ready to teach the two people a harsh lesson.
Drunken people in nightclubs, depraved people do not know the outside world, and a terrible disaster is taking place.
At this time, a nearby wangfeng brother reported that a group of swat police officers with live ammunition actually came to the vicinity of Ximending's nightclub.
The black boss mistakenly thought that the police had come to eliminate his gang, so he took his younger brother and engaged in a firefight with the SWAT team.
The fighting between the two sides attracted a large army of zombies nearby, and in the face of the surging tide of corpses, the police and bandits had to join hands and cooperate, and a group of people fought and retreated to the building near Ximending.
However, the wife of the black boss was also bitten by the zombie, and although the black boss was cruel, he was indeed true love for his wife. But in the face of life and death choices, he had to endure the pain of killing his wife with his own hands, but he was still bitten.
On the other side, in an apartment building, Linda and her young daughter are being held captive.
The owner of the house is a very evil murderer, he uses rotten flesh to paste his face, so as to deceive the zombies in the city, every day to drive to the city to collect supplies and women, the fleeing Linda accidentally got into the murderer's car and was taken into the house by him.
In the apocalyptic crisis, the masked murderer gradually reveals his evil nature, he takes the surviving women he finds back to the apartment, imprisons them in the room as his playthings, and also captures several zombies and locks them in the basement, using zombies instead of livestock to generate electricity for himself.
Although the outside world has fallen, the masked man has become an underground ruler in his own home.
Naturally, Linda was not spared, imprisoned and abused by the masked man, and her daughter died at the hands of the murderer.
Soon another couple entered the apartment building for refuge, and the masked man coveted the beauty of the woman and pretended to let the two into the house.
Afterwards, one of the men was knocked down, but the woman fiercely resisted and accidentally found Linda imprisoned in the basement.
At the moment of crisis, the black boss, together with several surviving little brothers and SPECIAL police, fled into the apartment building and brought the masked murderer to justice on the spot.
The crowd had thought they could take a break, but the crisis was still not over.
It turned out that the man in the couple who had entered the apartment building before was actually a wanted murderer, which was not over, and what was more troublesome was that the black boss had actually been bitten by the zombie's finger long ago, and he had been hiding this matter until now.
The killer is afraid of being recognized by the special police, so he kills the ring, the roof leaks in the overnight rain, the black boss turns into a zombie monster at this time, and the survivor squad suffers heavy casualties.
In the end, only Linda escaped from the apartment with a lonely boy and a black foreign country.
When the crowd was desperate, the sound of helicopters suddenly came from the sky, and the three men put the corpses on the street into the words "SOS" distress signal, and finally waited for the rescue of the army and fled the Z-108 area.
This concludes the story of the film.
Although zombie movies have always been regarded as B-grade films, they have a long history in the European and American film and television circles.
Since the 1960s, zombie film director George Romero made the famous "Living Dead Trilogy", many famous directors of film history are keen on such subjects, such as "Lord of the Rings" director Peter Jackson, who made the classic "Corpses Play Across the Line" when he was a fledgling, and is still a cult masterpiece in the field of Western zombie movies.
In the field of Chinese films, Hong Kong director Ye Weixin is a forerunner, and in the early days, he also filmed low-cost zombie films such as "Biochemical Shou Corpse", which was well received by the audience, in comparison, Taiwanese zombie movies did start very late, and only director Qian Renhao's "Z-108 Abandoned City" and later "Corpse City" were counted.
When "Z-108 Abandoned City" was released that year, many critics slammed the film's weak plot, the production of a cottage, and denounced it as a shoddy copycat zombie movie.
But to be fair, such harsh responsibilities are biased, considering that the cost of the film is only about two million yuan, such a film is considered low-cost even in the field of literary and art films, let alone making a commercial genre film?
From this point of view, director Qian Renhao still made some highlights under the condition of limited funds, such as this film is quite remarkable at the level of service and chemical road, special effects makeup and corpse battlefield surface is not simple, and as a cult film, this film actually has quite a lot of highlights.
At the level of the play, this film tries to show the human group portrait in front of the zombie disaster, there is a zombie army outside, there is a human conflict inside, forcing the underworld, special police, and civilians who do not trust each other, have to work together to escape, but although they cooperate with each other on the surface, they are still conspiring to fight, and even stage street fights and cannibalism.
The characteristic of Cult movies is that it is difficult to look at the story with the eyes of orthodox movies, after all, in this kind of movie, the plot is all floating clouds, and making the audience cool is the focus. In an interview, director Qian Renhao once summarized the film as two major selling points: corpse and flesh.
Although this film is a pot of zombies, thrillers, killers, hunting, suspense, action and other genre elements of the big mess stew, but the clichés have cheesy entertainment, the horror zombie scenes have eye-catching beauties, Du Yuhang, who played "Ip Man Prequel", took himself in the film and beat the zombies with Wing Chun, and the villain masked murderer's personality obviously borrowed from "Texas Chainsaw Killer".
In short, black humor and bad taste, coupled with a pure cool film style, are the biggest selling points of this film.
Of course, to be fair, the shortcomings of "Z-108 Abandoned City" are also obvious, the hard wounds on the film's story connection are visible to the naked eye, there is no plot at all, the five-cent special effects are flooded, there are many problems in the performance, the most embarrassing thing is that the director himself cameoed in the masked murderer, even if the face is covered, the performance is also very bad, which is the biggest failure of the whole film.
However, for such a low-budget zombie movie, spoofs, vulgarity, and bad taste are its characteristics, and people who like it will naturally like this kind of self-serving, deviant alternative style.
What's more, with the comparison of "Crying Sorrows" today, it seems that Qian Renhao is at least really shooting a zombie movie type, and this spirit of exploration that dares to be the first is worth encouraging!