The new work "Mantra", directed and directed by Ke Mengrong, has achieved a box office of more than 100 million yuan in 10 days of release in Taiwan Province, and has caused a wave of discussion on the Internet.
This has undoubtedly become another phenomenon-level horror film in Taiwan after "The Little Girl in Red" and "Female Ghost Bridge".
Interestingly, looking at the proportion of Taiwan's box office in recent years, horror and thrillers have dominated the majority.
In 2022, there are already 8 horror movies that have sharpened their knives.
Although more than half of the audience said they did not dare to watch it, this has always been a large number of genres that have been steadily exported by the Taiwanese film industry and eventually obtained high incomes.
Some foreign websites have counted that after calculating the average box office of each type of Taiwanese film, it was found that horror films led other genres with a box office performance of more than NT$50 million, much higher than the average box office of 15 million.
Even "Xinglin Hospital", which scored 3.7, had a box office of nearly NT$30 million.
In the fluctuating and unpredictable Taiwanese film market, the horror and horror genre seems to be a typical example of a small number of "low investment and high returns".
Back in the past two years, there is not only "Crying Sorrow" that has made netizens on both sides of the strait and three places applaud, but also the dark horse "Curse" that was suddenly killed in April this year.
"Spell" jumped to the top of the high reputation of "surpassing "Double Pupil", "Taiwanese horror film ceiling", and has a super high box office of NT$168 million so far.
Although the equivalent of only 36 million yuan is equivalent, this data, as the film market of Bay Bay, is enough to "hang" a large number of mainland movies.
So why are horror movies so popular in Taiwan?
Before answering this question, why do Taiwanese directors like to make horror movies so much?
In fact, horror films have always been the type with the highest return on investment in movies.
According to the Hollywood Times, 53 percent of U.S. films between 1996 and 2016 were eligible for return, higher than other genres and average payback rates (37 percent).
The high-paying films that have the largest disparity between box office revenue and shooting costs in history are almost all horror films.
Not only can they create amazing experiences with low-cost techniques ("Corpse Memories"), but they can even develop into IP to continuously produce sequel movies ("The Girl in Red").
To put it simply, the horror genre itself has its own "buff", because of its tense and stimulating sensory experience, it is bound to gain the love of a large number of audiences.
Another point is that when large film companies are only willing to invest huge costs in sequels, prequels, and sequels that make no loss, horror films can compete for the remaining resources in the cracks with the advantage of "low cost and high remuneration", and small film companies are also willing to use this as a feasible plan based on non-mainstream niches and conquer the commercial market.
In this way, there are bound to be some unknown new directors who want to quickly "kill" a market of their own through horror films.
In summary, the above-mentioned genre characteristics, placed in the Asian film and television market that has long faced the "hegemonic oppression" of Hollywood blockbusters, seems to be an easy-to-learn and useful endorsement strategy.
When the Japanese film "Midnight Bell" first officially opened the Asian horror movie boom in 1998, it was "out of control".
The Japanese have changed the stereotype of horror movies in the past, and this move has quickly become the leader of the 21st century Asian horror movie boom.
As a result, South Korea, Thailand, Singapore, the Philippines, and Malaysia handed over the works inheriting "Midnight Bells" around 2000, and even further bought the adaptation rights by DreamWorks in the United States, and three American versions of "Midnight Bells" were also greatly praised.
They don't necessarily have the horror of long-haired female ghosts crawling out of the TV, but they are all filmed with low-cost equipment, replacing special effects and big stars with low-cost production, and introducing local religious folklore or urban legends.
Looking at Taiwan's prolific horror thrillers today, they often follow a similar model.
The most notable case is that Cheng Weihao, who once satirized young directors who can only make thrillers, finally opened his own genre film creation with "The Little Girl in Red".
While making the previous work self-deprecating, it also created the most successful IP of Taiwanese horror movies in recent years.
The goal of horror films is relatively single, as long as it can scare people, it can spread to a certain group. Assuming that the audience still has doubts about the uneven quality of Taiwanese films, horror films are also more attractive to movie audiences who only ask for ticket money and do not lose money, after all, it will scare people's standards, and it seems to be more secure than the crying points that vary from person to person.
In Taiwan Province, where the market and resources are relatively limited, horror movies are watched and filmed, which shows that compared with the particularity of the place, it is caused by the special factors of films from the world to Asia.
Of course, from the perspective of the big phenomenon, it is difficult to explain why Taiwanese horror movies are made well, or we have to return to the film itself.
"Crying Sorrow" is not commented on here for the time being, and the evaluation of the two poles will be "fighting mouths" no matter how you say it.
However, "Spell", which was released in Bay Bay in April this year, has achieved unanimous praise.
In Taiwan, Chen Guofu's "Double Pupil" laid the foundation for the unshakable status of Taiwan's horror film history.
And "Spell" can be compared with "Double Pupil", you can imagine its wonderful degree.
You know, a certain petal of "Spell" has a score of 8.0 points, which is better than 97% of horror films, and "Double Pupil" is only 7.3 points.
The score of horror movies is really good to this extent.
The director of "Spell" Ke Mengrong is obviously a director who is not very famous in Taiwan.
The director said in an interview that the filming cost of "The Spell" was only NT$33 million, but every sum was spent on the blade.
Among them, art and special effects account for the largest proportion, and the soundtrack and sound effects are also heavily compared to other movies.
With limited resources, pseudo-documentary shooting methods provide more room to play, and the cameras of non-professional film equipment (even mobile phones and GoPro action cameras) and faint lights are ostensibly intended to make a sense of recording, but also accurately dispatch the audience's visible vision.
Because compared to other horror films, the perspective of this film is too real!
Take the scene in "The Spell" in which the heroine returns to the village, each fleeting element is not only to explain the plot and world view, but also to be more frightening because of the limited perspective.
After all, vague parts are always more frightening than clear full views.
The unknown darkness that surrounds it, the possible fright of the next shaky shot, is what makes "Spell" creepy.
However, "Spell" clearly retains a lot of commercial techniques compared to most horror films of the same type.
Whether it's arranging multi-camera photography of a single scene or capturing many reaction shots, or using the cross-cutting of two narrative lines to create suspense and climax, not to mention the thrillers or warm soundtracks that fuel emotions, it shows that the sense of on-the-spot participation in "Mantra" actually depends on other designs.
Maybe even a more affordable design.
The film opens with "The Spell" first instilling hints to the audience with disturbingly concise symbols and words.
Then the visual experience allows the audience to no longer just passively accept information as a vehicle, but to believe that their will may play a role.
As a result, the premise of the "horror" degree of the whole movie has been established, even if we do not really believe that the magician is successful in casting the spell with the blessing of the whole audience, but it is the good magician who can pull the audience to "go into the water".
Rather than utterly unpredictable fright, these symbols and incantations are imprinted in a minimalist way in the audience's audiovisual experience.
It also amplifies the horror that the audience has been deeply immersed in when the mystery is revealed.
Although in this form alone, the interpretation of the "evil spirit" in the film is only a series of subtitles, the gradually enlarged spell whispers and horror sound effects, and the flashing words that overcome the problem of pre-thunderstorms in Chinese subtitle sentence patterns all reinforce the authenticity of the image and the fear of unknown curses.
In addition, the encounters of other characters also enhance the frightening degree of taboo.
When anyone who has seen the authentic video is spared, and the curtain is opened, the audience who is personally involved must not want to "escape".
Fortunately, the final thrill did not disappoint, the authentic furnishings not only closely follow the religious background setting, the big black Buddha mother statue does not need too fancy, expensive computer special effects, can create an endless abyss of fear with mirror imagery.
As a result, "Spell" complements the form and content, making the pseudo-documentary point of view choice not only to let the audience invest in the same perspective as the characters in the film, but also to limit the role of the heroine and determine the known information of the audience.
Because from the moment the heroine confesses to the camera (pretending), the audience has gone into layers of deception.
"Mantra" brings the audience a sense of closeness and strangeness in terms of religious content, and an inexplicable sense of alienation.
This is the first cleverness of The Spell.
"Spell" uses the handheld DV method of "Blair the Witch" in the United States to shoot pseudo-documentaries, and the curse packaging of "Midnight Bell", and is based on religious elements native to Taiwan.
It really incorporates these elements that are everywhere around our lives into the story.
And by giving these elements the impression that is completely opposite to the established impressions in life (religions that are supposed to be good end up with evil consequences or malice), they make people fearful.
It can be said that this is a good medicine for the use of the strengths of the horror genre in the weak Taiwanese film industry and carefully mixed.
In most cases, horror films shot in the form of pseudo-documentaries are mostly not originally presented to the audience for malicious purposes, and the filmmakers in the scenes are usually purely for investigation, to explore the truth, to convey knowledge, but the final result of the shooting achieves a terrifying effect, which is not the case with "The Curse".
All the broken messages and the ideas provided in the Mantra are designed.
The horror felt by the viewer, from a certain moment, becomes the purpose of the photographer, not just the result of chance. This reversal at the end of the film also makes all the unnatural feelings on the way to the movie seem to have an acceptable reason.
What has to be mentioned is the key incantation in the film.
Since the beginning, the Mantra has repeated the concepts of "blessing" and "consciousness shaping the world", as well as the mantra of "Fire Buddha Shuichi, Heart Sassa Moo", unconsciously achieving psychological hints to the audience.
So that even after watching the movie, it is quite difficult to forget this spell.
At the end of the film, it uses visual persistence to create a curse-like illusion, which not only intersects the image content with the audience, brings the illusion into reality, but also makes people more impressed by the so-called "blessing", so that the afterglow of the film can last for a long time.
The horror genre's usual scary trick is based on the villain's setting higher than the victim's protagonist and audience, making us worry about the unknown with the characters.
Or let the audience know more than the character to stir up tension about the character's situation.
However, "Spell" is disguised as the heroine's limited religious cognition, making the audience think that they know more narrative plot than other supporting characters in the movie, lower than the gods, and equal to the protagonist, but in fact, they are higher than other supporting characters and lower than the protagonists.
In the scene where the male protagonist drives and the female protagonist encounters the "ghost hitting the wall", the female protagonist does not dare to look at the white-clad female ghost hanging on the street lamp, but stretches out the video recorder and forces the audience to watch instead of herself.
This is the most thrilling scene in the whole film in my opinion, pointing to the end where the heroine forces the audience to accept the sacrifice instead of herself.
Presumably, the audience at that time all mentioned the throat eye.
In the past, the shooting technique of pseudo-documentaries always tried to simulate the truth, but in "The Spell", it became a magic trick to make the lies more realistic.
But for me, to talk about the significance of "The Spell" in the context of Taiwanese cinema is not just a "horror ceiling".
What is really important is its complete reversal of the proposition of "love does not die" in Taiwanese horror films.
Obviously, this is the afterglow of the copy of "Double Pupil".
The more professional term "love does not die" may be warm-hearted, which refers to the creator's creation of touching "love and care" as the purpose of creation, blindly pursuing cheap, indiscriminate popular works, so that readers or viewers can only immerse themselves in an atmosphere similar to a religious gathering, but there is no room for other thinking, or to discern how much of the work can be considered, or because it is truly profound, so touching.
Such a model is that "Double Pupil" allows detective Huang Huotu to be resurrected after death because of "love does not die" under the cries of his wife and daughter;
The "Love Doesn't Die" model of "Double Pupil" was a huge success at the time, and even 20 years later, it still applies today.
"Little Girl in Red 2" touches li ghost with mother-daughter affection, and finally tries to rescue the protagonist by exorcising the demon god boy (Taiwan horror legend);
To "Soul Hunting" can even add the soul transfer setting to help the lover get rid of the crime, the body is dead and the soul must be loved.
In the decades since the development of Taiwanese horror films, many new directors have followed this model, but ignored the creation possibilities of challenges and flip genres, and boiled suspense, romance, comedy, and action movies into a pot of "chicken soup for the soul", that is, to make "love not die" embodied in the narrative routine of packaging every time to solve all problems.
This makes Taiwanese audiences tired of this routine.
The above is just a list of a few of Taiwan's most representative horror films, the biggest advantage of "love does not die" is to make up for the original dialectical space of the work, let love flood the theater like a tide, and do not "drown" the audience without giving up.
This is not just a problem unique to the horror genre, but even works with a scary mission cannot escape the clutches of warmth, let alone other commercial works with the purpose of "moving".
For me, the biggest breakthrough of "Spell" is that at first glance, it creates a dramatic effect with similar routines, but in the end, it completely breaks the creative habit of "love does not die".
Taiwanese films are not cases that do not end in tragedy, but the success of the ending does not affect whether they have escaped the shackles of warmth.
The first half of "The Spell" is a typical Bay Cavity sensational trick, with mother-daughter love as the main axis, so that the heroine, in the process of getting along with her daughter, gradually realized that her love for her daughter was greater than everything, and decided to reverse the vows of the Buddha mother and pull the whole world together to sacrifice in the tunnel, just to exchange her daughter's life.
But the more tender the beginning of the film and the more effort she puts in for her daughter, the more tragic her tragic ending becomes.
According to the religious setting of the "Mantra", the heroine only has to follow the instructions of the Buddha mother, dedicate her daughter to the gods, and even let the original psychic girl go down the mountain to complete the inheritance at the end, but she repeatedly cannot even completely deny religious beliefs.
He wandered between various methods from science to Taoism to cults, and frequently moved his selfish intentions and abandoned his previous achievements.
It can be seen that from the pastor to the heroine, their ending is not wrong in their love, not in their superstition, not in their kindness, but only because they love selfishly, superstitiously for their own interests, and only because they are kind to their families.
"The Spell" thus departs from "there is love that does not die."
To a large extent, it is indeed better than "Double Pupil" in the handling of details.
The success of "The Spell" at the box office proves that it is not the Taiwanese audience that needs warmth, but the Taiwanese film that looks down on the audience's vision.
The creative consciousness of "Spell" that makes good use of the horror film genre tradition under limited conditions and flips it reminds us that "small cost" is never an excuse for making a bad and mediocre work, but a set of strategies worth referencing and further challenging.
After decades of innovation, "The Curse" finally revealed how unbearable the tunnel called warmth is, and I hope that in the future, Taiwanese directors can seal the curse, don't give their lives for love in the film, and be hit by love and bleed.
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