"Chinese horror" is still popular.
In the recent hit drama "Canglan Tips", a wedding held in the shadow of a red candle and in the snow made many viewers call out the horror, which was considered to be mixed with a strong Element of Chinese horror aesthetics, and in the discussion of this plot, there was no lack of exclamations of "or the most terrifying Chinese horror".
In the field of games that have brought the concept of "Chinese horror" out of the circle in recent years, there have been several trends that have attracted the attention of players throughout the summer. The new work of the "Paper Wedding Dress" series,"Paper Wedding Dress 4 Red Silk Entanglement", was launched on the day of the Zhongyuan Festival, quickly topped the iOS free game list, and the number of downloads exceeded 1 million within a week. Previously, the plagiarism controversy between the IP and a secret room puzzle variety show also entered the Weibo hot search.
In addition, there is a public real-machine demonstration of "Cave Diary" based on Lu Xun's novel; The new work "Three Volts", which has attracted much attention from the same producer, "Fireworks", announced that the development progress is more than halfway; "Yin and Yang Pot", which revolves around the story of the mountain city hot pot, is online... If you search for "Chinese horror" on TapTap, you'll find more than a dozen games of the same genre waiting to be launched or open for pre-order.
Unconsciously, "Chinese horror" gradually became known to the public and began to be systematized from a relatively niche style generalization, a non-proprietary word that occasionally appeared in the context of propaganda.
Poison Eye (id: DomoreDumou) found that on the one hand, the "Chinese horror" in the past few years is essentially "red", but the main carrier has migrated from novels and movies to games, and the concept has external factors, which means that it still has the hidden worry of rapid cooling; On the other hand, it does have the potential to become an intrinsic collection of popular culture in the "summative concept" like mature themes such as cyberpunk and Cthulhu.
What are we afraid of in "Chinese horror"
The starting point of this round of "Chinese horror fever" can be traced back to 2018.
The game "Soul Chips" takes the Republic of China as the background, designs maps such as tulou and theater, and can manipulate characters including zombies and ghost brides, but the game mode adopts the "asymmetric confrontation" that was hot at that time. The "horror" in competitive games can only stay at the visual level, and "Soul Chips" only uses descriptions such as "oriental style" and "Chinese style" when promoting.
Limited matching mechanisms, plug-ins and other issues, this game has not become a "hit" like "The Fifth Personality". Just half a year later, a horror game released by a Taiwanese production team surprised many players, but because of the problems of the production team, it did not spread for a long time.
2019's Paper Man and Detective: Night Marriage have made the category gain momentum, and the quality of the game has been recognized worldwide.
Resident Evil: Veronica's producer Maki Yuyu shang once sent a 6,000-word demo review to the "Paper Man" production team, which specifically wrote that "Chinese horror elements bring a very fresh feeling" - as the leader of horror puzzle games, the "Resident Evil" series is from the Japanese company Capcom, but there is no doubt that it has a distinct "Western-style horror" element.
2020's "Hong Kong Trick Record" was played by a number of e-sports anchors, and the audience was happy to watch the exaggerated reaction of the anchor being frightened, so that the game protagonist "Jiahui" was jokingly called "the woman who killed the entire LPL" by the fans of "League of Legends", which made "Chinese horror" complete a "circle" based on live broadcast platforms and social media.
2021 has become a harvest year for Chinese horror games, with tapTap ratings of 9.2 and 9.6 respectively for the two "Paper Wedding Dresses", and the Steam praise rate of "Fireworks" is as high as 98%, and its process clearance video can have more than 4 million views on the B station.
The most cited argument about the charm of "horror" is probably Lovecraft's statement that "the oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear", "ancient" need not be mentioned, "strong" to some extent from the transformation of emotions, just like riding a roller coaster will be more exciting than simply falling or rising. The British writer Montagu Rhodes James has talked about an emotional paradox: on the one hand, people will feel disgusting and uncomfortable with things in horror works, and on the other hand, discomfort will be transformed into pleasure for inexplicable reasons.
However, traditional research is more in a Western context. Audiences who have been frightened by Chinese horror will most likely find that Chinese horror has no strong visual impact elements such as broken limbs and blood plasma, nor does it have any disgusting mutant monsters, and appreciating such literary and artistic works usually does not produce too many emotional ups and downs, but it will always be grabbed by a sense of weirdness.
Image source: Internet
Many netizens have tried to summarize the difference between "Chinese" and "Japanese", "American", "Thai" and other horror cultures, and many image examples have been born.
For example, someone once mentioned that the same is the "closet in the middle of the night", a devil with fangs lying on the top of the cabinet, suddenly rushing down to disembowelate you, which is "American horror"; The cabinet does not look out of the ordinary, it will quietly open after falling asleep, the room will scream, and after a while only the messy bedding and blood on the ground will be left, which is "Japanese horror"; After turning off the lights, how the cabinet looks is not right, even like someone standing there, but as soon as the lights are turned on, everything is normal, which is "Chinese horror".
Often used to illustrate "Chinese horror"
The sense of weirdness must be produced in contrast with the normal situation, and doing something strange in a normal atmosphere will make people feel hairy in their hearts. In the movie "Zombie", a mother-in-law is reluctant to admit that her wife is dead, and she also talks to him every day to ask "whether the food is appetizing" and "Don't smoke so much smoke", which is a typical Chinese horror. "Paper Wedding Dress" revolves around the narrative of "dark marriage", and the ritual steps of the dark marriage are the same as the wedding ceremony between the yang, if you look at it from the perspective of looking at a normal wedding, the details of the decoration and atmosphere become the source of fear.
"Talking to the dead" and "wedding for the dead" all originate from the custom of "avoiding talking about death" in Chinese culture, which is one of the psychological states of Chinese horror, and furthermore, the core of Chinese horror is, to a large extent, "folk terror". It is also a significant difference from other horror cultures, Europe, the United States and Japan actually have two forms of terror, modern and folk expressions, modern categories of "serial killers", "urban strange talk" and so on, but the Chinese style only refers to one.
Those representative visual elements such as paper figures, coins, coffins, bodhisattva statues, red lanterns, embroidered shoes, etc., the objects themselves have neutral colors, are not invented to scare people, and the reason why they often appear terrifying in literary and artistic works is because they will be associated with the customs, rituals, and rules of feudal society.
The strange feeling of violation is superficial and short-lived, and the more frightening experience of "Chinese horror" is the sense of oppression and oppression.
Many works need to put the story stage in an enclosed space far from modern civilization, such as the ancient mansion in the late Qing Dynasty in "Paper Man", the mountain village town in "Fireworks", and the "Hong Kong Mystery Record" with the urban background also put the opening of the game in the Kowloon City Walled City... In these places, the main clues such as superstition and witchcraft are unfolded, and the theme of the story is often the tragedy of man under the oppression of feudal rules.
There is also a view that Chinese-style terror can also be seen as a kind of "rule terror". The clan patriarchy that has lasted for thousands of years, or the many superstitious parts of folk culture, are extremely powerful rules, and individuals are basically powerless to confront these rules.
As small as "Paper Man" in "incense can only be inserted in order", as large as "fireworks" in the wife is used as a container for the husband's soul possession... To some extent, people must distort themselves under unscientific and unreasonable rules, which is the essence of the narrative of Chinese horror, and it is also the root cause of the chills of such works.
Whether it is a single clan power or a custom formed by the collective unconscious, the rules are made by people, and "the most terrifying thing is the human heart" is also an appropriate summary of Chinese horror.
Analogous to other genres such as cyberpunk, "high-tech low life" is its soul, and the visual violation constructed with plaques, paper people, etc. is roughly equivalent to piling up neon pollution in the work. The connection with folk culture and the repression of the narrator may make Chinese horror flourish for a while.
How long can the "heat" of Chinese horror last
It's easy to think of "Chinese horror" as one of the "pop culture" that has emerged in recent years, but the newly coined concept is not a castle in the air, it is still based on the existing cognitive foundation. "Chinese horror" in a broad sense has a long history, and the corresponding works have different connotations and expressions in different periods.
In ancient mainland china, horror stories were generally involved in ghosts and gods. During the Wei and Jin Dynasties and the Southern and Northern Dynasties, the "ZhiWei Novels" were very prosperous, and there were more than 30 kinds of novels preserved in the Six Dynasties, and the "Biography of Lieyi" "involved the contents of immortal spirits, ghosts and ghosts, especially those who wrote ghosts." The Qing Dynasty's "Liaozhai Zhiyi" is the pinnacle of ancient novels, and its main themes can be summarized as acupuncture, satire, and anti-arranged marriages.
"Chatting with Zai Zhiyi" serves ghosts
Nowadays, although these ancient works are still adapted from time to time, they have faded the horror background for various reasons, and are often regarded as fantasy and fantasy works for the audience to consume.
Since modern times, a more obvious peak has been the intensive shooting of zombie genre films in Hong Kong in the 1980s, which was the enlightenment of a generation of mainland audiences for "horror content".
In 1980, Hong Jiaban's "Ghost Fights Ghosts" ranked third in the Hong Kong film box office with a score of 5.675 million Hong Kong dollars. In 1985, the same set of team continued to work hard, Lin Zhengying starred in "Mr. Zombie" became a hit, the box office reached 20.092 million Hong Kong dollars, the film screenwriter Huang Ying wrote in the book "China's First Zombie": "Because of the success of "Mr. Zombie", some producers in Hong Kong and Taiwan rushed to shoot, there is a record, seventeen zombie movies rushed to shoot at the same time..."
Mr. Zombie
This phenomenon of piling up soon made the audience aesthetically tired, and Lin Zhengying integrated Western vampires into his works in 1989, and for the first time independently directed the film "One Eyebrow Taoist", which allowed Maoshan Shu to duel with Western monsters, and once again achieved tens of millions of Hong Kong dollars at the box office after its release. It can also be seen that Hong Kong zombie films are actually less limited by the "Chinese" in the cultural sense, and more emphasis is placed on entertainment.
In fact, the prosperity of Hong Kong zombie films itself is indeed the result of the fusion of East and West, as early as the 30s, Hong Kong has been influenced by the same period of Hollywood monster movies ghost films appeared. Another feature that differs from later generations is that the audience can get a sense of security from Taoist priests and professional ghost hunters, and the movie and television angles and emotions will follow such characters, and "horror" is only the foreshadowing before the war between the "good and evil sides". Not only that, in the same period, Hong Kong also gave birth to comedy movies represented by the "Happy Ghost" series and Stephen Chow's "Night of the Soul", which made "horror" go to the other extreme.
Night of the Returning Souls
Around 2005, there was a wave of horror novels in the mainland, taking the physical publishing route of "Face", "Deserted Village Apartment", "The 19th Floor of Hell" and other best-selling books, "Cowards", "Suspense Chronicles" and other periodicals have also been launched, and on the Internet side, there are Tianya "Lotus Peng Ghost Talk", starting point, red sleeves and other platforms for serialization. The works of this period are multi-faceted, and the creation of modern cities and ancient legends is common.
The last round of "Chinese horror fever" is the blowout of domestic horror films, in 2014-2017, the mainland film box office entered a period of rapid growth, content supply can not keep up with the needs of the audience for a while, "domestic horror films" have become a regular in the theater, some major production companies such as Dongyang April Day produce 6-8 films per year.
In many domestic horror films, Chinese horror elements such as ancient houses, lanterns, and paper people will also be used, but the best situation is only "not applauded", such as "Beijing 81" box office reached 412 million, Douban score 4.8, and the sequel "Beijing 81 No. 2" continued to decline to 3.7.
In the case of basically binding with the impression of "bad films", the output of domestic horror films has dropped sharply in recent years. A total of 69 films were released in 2016, which fell to 22 in 2018, and only 10 have been released this year. Of course, they are not gone, but more tied to the long video platform, becoming an important part of the growth of online movies, the more representative one is the "Legend of the Hunter of Xing'anling" in 2021.
Compared with the "predecessors" of different periods, the game has become an important carrier of "baton" Chinese horror, and there are two advantages that cannot be ignored.
One is that the interactive nature of the game medium is very suitable for horror themes, even if it is a beginner method, Jump Scare, because it requires players to invest in control, there is no "closed eyes" or "skip reading" option, and its frightening effect is stronger than that of video and text carriers. Many games also offer space to explore, where players can stay in a single scene for a long time, and if you want to lay the groundwork for a weird atmosphere, the game will also have a multiplier effect.
The second is that the plot quality of representative works is more recognized by the audience. This is more obvious in the comparison with Hong Kong zombie films and mainland horror films, which is actually the precondition for a number of games to "fire". Most of the current standouts are indie games, with relatively weak commercial and entertainment attributes, and the production team can focus more on self-expression.
More importantly, it is precisely because the expression of "Paper Man", "Fireworks", and "Paper Wedding Dress" is more concentrated, so that "Chinese horror" has become a proprietary concept that has been invented and summarized, and its aesthetic performance has been roughly fixed and derived from a certain cultural connotation. If you take this new concept and apply it to the past creations, you will find some excellent works that also fit its characteristics, and you will also find that the works produced in batches in some periods are either not "Chinese" enough or not "scary" enough.
As mentioned above, "Chinese horror" as a cultural collection can have its own vitality, and its extension may continue to be amplified in the process of dissemination, such as the phenomenon of "Chinese horror" in some online communities that often refer to daily life or social hotspot events. However, Chinese horror games as consumer products must follow commercial logic after all, and the signs of recession that have occurred in the past on Hong Kong zombie films and mainland horror films may also be staged again.
For single-player producers, the market pressure is relatively small, and this freedom also makes them unnecessary to focus on Chinese horror. "Fireworks" producer Moonlight Cockroach's last work, "Hesse-cho Kitan", has a Japanese fantasy style, and the new work "Three Volts" is also based on suspense, he once told Poison Eye: "The focus of the studio is actually not to make horror games, but to tell a good story." ”
"Three Volts"
For the team that operates the company, relying on the plot to attract people has become an obvious double-edged sword. Visual elements are relatively easy to copy, while good stories can barely be copied. This is a kind of hidden worry that the current Chinese horror spreads in the carrier of games.
Taking the "Paper Wedding Dress" series as an example, "Paper Wedding Dress 4" still achieved a high score of 9.1 on TapTap, but the negative reviews in popular reviews are basically related to the plot and characters. The developer Heartbeat Interactive Entertainment currently has only this one IP, which relies on in-game advertising to make a profit, and produces a sequel about every six months. Word-of-mouth gaming relies too much on story quality and is not a sufficiently insured business model.
At the same time, the mainstream gameplay of Chinese-style horror games is still very single, and several masterpieces are puzzle games without a threshold for getting started, relying on text and dynamic screens to promote the process, which is itself a form of strong narrative and weak gameplay. From the perspective of the category as a whole, the homogenization of the gameplay is obviously not conducive to the further exploration of the theme.
The use of folklore elements to "decorate" the game is not without threshold, TapTap tweeted, "There are some paper wedding like games on the market, and the popularity of these games is much lower than that of paper wedding dresses, and even almost no heat." The producers of "Paper Wedding Dress" attributed the reason to the need to combine folk elements with the function of the game, and the simple stacking did not work, "so that our own horror games could not be industrialized and mass-produced."
In other words, no matter how many products follow the trend, if there is no batch of works with a level above the average line, it will not be able to talk about category prosperity. On the contrary, it may also consume the audience's interest in the subject matter and embark on the old road of domestic horror films.
Of course, as long as the spiritual core is established, the "Chinese horror" that is genetically linked to the Chinese people can continue to evolve. The next time you are touched by it, it may be a game, or it may be any other carrier.