The author | Vernica
Editor| Li Chunhui
To tell a ghost story that suits the scene, the ghost film has disappeared from the Qingming file for a long time. Since 2014, every year around the Qingming Festival, there will be a horror movie with a very frightening name, "Guardian Spirit", "Wraith XX", "Midnight XX" and so on. However, this year, there is only one suspense film that barely sticks to the elements of horror, "The Mystery of the Sacred Mountain Village".
The overall decline of domestic horror films must start from a sudden incident three years ago. In the Qingming file in 2018, the closely watched "Middle Evil" was temporarily withdrawn, marking the swing of the big knife of rectification supervision, and horror films quickly entered a period of silence, and the number of releases decreased sharply year by year.
In 2018, a total of 22 horror films were released throughout the year, compared with 48 in 2017, which was cut in half. In 2019, it continued to cut nearly half to 14. At its peak in 2016, the number of horror films released in China was as high as 90 a year.
Looking around, horror films in Europe, the United States and the Asia-Pacific region have a completely different historical destiny. Not only have horror films flourished, but they have even played the role of savior in the film market under the epidemic. "The Invisible Man," which was forced to switch online for three weeks of north American release last year, grossed $123 million at the box office at a cost of $7 million. After a year, it also received 25 million box office in domestic releases.
Horror films, as the most commercial genre films that can exchange small and large for high return on investment, really have no future in the Chinese market?
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="8" > censorship is not an excuse to make bad movies</h1>
Before 2010, horror films did not have names in mainland theaters. The reason why it has become a genre rise is due to the rise of two forces: one is the Hong Kong company that turned to the mainland and returned to the old business to promote the "ghost film tide"; the other is the sudden emergence of the "strange" company Hengye Pictures, which specializes in distributing domestic ghost films.
In 2011, two horror films that shocked the industry with ultra-high returns appeared in the mainland market, and it was from these two forces. Hengye's "pseudo-documentary" "B Zone 32", which imitates the gameplay of North American horror films, earned 14.86 million at a super low cost of 80,000; "Far Cry", controlled by Hong Kong Meiya Entertainment, ate the dividends of the starring Yang Mi's popularity in "Palace" that year, and won nearly 90 million at a cost of less than 5 million.
In the next few years, traditional Hong Kong film companies such as Jiaying and Yindu Institutions have successively entered the market, and various unknown companies in the mainland have also poured into the horror film creation end. At this stage, the seemingly booming horror film market is actually filled with businessmen who make quick money and play tickets, and shoddy horror films are generally lower than 4 points on Douban, and some are even ridiculed by the audience as "comedies". Soon, the box office of domestic horror films fell from a general break of 10 million to a difficult point where it rarely exceeded a million.
Of course, in the face of the aesthetic fatigue of the market, the filmmakers have also tried to make adjustments. During this period, Hengye had teamed up with Hong Kong directors to try to make high-quality horror films, and the luxury horror film "Jingcheng 81" starring Wu Zhen Yulin Xinru and with a box office of 400 million yuan was born, and no one has broken the box office record of domestic horror films it has created.
But this kind of high-quality effort seems to be only reflected in the production. The level of art setting, costumes and special effects has been significantly improved, but the storytelling method has not been qualitatively improved. This is why the sequel to "Beijing 81" 3 years later, obviously the production level is not reduced, but the box office is halved, only 200 million.
Hard Candy Jun also understands that the pace of progress of domestic horror films at the story level has been restricted by censorship to some of their imagination. For example, the unwritten rule is that "ghosts cannot appear, and after the founding of the country, they cannot become spirits." It is clearly stipulated that the film must not contain content that "incites and undermines the state's religious policy and promotes cults and superstitions".
But that's not an excuse for making bad movies. The strongest evidence is that in the past three years, when domestic horror films have declined, the imported foreign horror films "Silent Place" and "Happy Death Day" can not only pass the censorship in content, but also win a good box office. This does not show that what has stumbled on domestic horror films is not only censorship, but the overall production idea.
In the 1930s, the mature Shanghai film market also had a wave of strange films, and also experienced the rampant bad films and box office lows. Until 1937, Ma Xuweibang's horror film "Midnight Song", which combined the ideas of the times and took the theme of anti-feudalism and freedom, appeared, which not only injected a deep story core into the horror film, but also achieved a box office hit. The film became a household name in Shanghai and became a classic in film history. In 1995, Zhang Guorong and Wu Qianlian also starred in a remake version of the film, which also won awards, box office, and word-of-mouth success.
The rise of a genre film will almost inevitably go through such a development process. Although the content of the first testers also has such and such problems, but the theme dividend is very successful; and after the commercial follow-up shooting fixed model flooded, the burned audience is no longer willing to pay for it; only the emergence of anti-routine, high-quality works can revitalize the genre and realize the iteration of genre films.
In today's field of domestic horror films, after the group of businessmen who made quick money left the scene, the people who stayed behind had nothing more than to change their positions, run to the internet university to insist on copying the previous low-level model, and feed the audience a "horror three-piece set" - Jump scare (jump scare), soft pornography, and horror sound effects. What domestic horror films are now missing is a bellwether, setting a new benchmark for the industry and reawakening the market's confidence in horror films.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="8" > suspense, soft science fiction is the way out</h1>
Hengye Pictures, which has the most bellwether potential, has already extended its investment tentacles to various types of films at its peak in 2014, and for the revitalization of the old horror films, it is obvious that it is already in Cao Ying's heart.
In 2016, Hengye failed one after another due to the guarantee of "Xia You QiaoMu YaWang Heaven" and "Dream Partner", and suffered heavy losses. In 2018, Hengye returned to the old line, hoping to revitalize the hardcover "Middle Evil" with a small broad, but did not expect to be forced to withdraw due to excessive publicity, and the film has not yet seen the light of day.
At the same time, some manufacturers who realized that domestic horror films urgently needed to improve the quality also made some attempts to deal with the lack of talent. For example, co-producing horror films with Japanese and Thai directors, a number of fresh horror films "Wraith Dolls", "Network Murder Bells", "Invisible Children", etc. have been co-produced with Japanese and Thai directors, and the films have tens of millions of box office performances, but they still fail to break the bottleneck of low reputation.
And according to the interview with Sheng Yubin, the producer of "Network Murder Bell", the co-production film was spent up to four years because of the exchange of running-in scripts, and in order to meet the shooting standards of Japanese director Tsuruta, he paid a cost that exceeded expectations, and in the end it was not a cost-effective deal, which directly led to his decision to change careers and no longer make horror films.
Trying to achieve a leap in the quality of domestic horror films in the form of imports and Chinese-foreign co-productions is obviously delusional. Domestic horror films need to be steady and steady to learn the basic skills, first of all, to eliminate the deep-rooted creation of the mortar, horror films are not equal to ghost films, it can have many ways of presentation.
For example, high-concept soft science fiction gameplay, monsters that grab people through sound in "A Quiet Place", and "Groundhog Day" repeated death nightmares in "Happy Day of Death". Another example is the "Invisible Man" packaged by social topics, which uses the non-existent invisible person as a metaphor for the violent control of male power PUA in marriage, catering to the current hot feminist topic.
Previously, the Spanish suspense films "Invisible Guest" and "Mirage" imported in China also have elements of horror and horror, which is also another way out for domestic horror films. Hengye's remake of "Manslaughter" can be regarded as a beautiful turnaround battle in this genre.
But the real high-concept domestic horror films have never appeared, and the mixed genre "Soul Hunting" released this year is finally the first step.
The director of the film, Cheng Weihao, is the director of commercial films that has risen rapidly in Taiwan in recent years due to the horror film "Little Girl in Red" series, and he has rationalized the presentation of horror content through the packaging of soft science fiction and suspense genres in Taiwan, not only passing the mainland censorship, but also winning the box office of more than 100 million, giving the mainland market a surprise and also giving horror films a little hope.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="8" > horror movies should not be abandoned</h1>
It is no exaggeration to say that horror films are at the end of the chain of domestic genre film contempt. Sheng Yubin, a producer who turned career after filming "Cyber Murder Bells", once humbly asked himself: "Why should I be the person who makes others scold?" ”
But there's nothing inherently wrong with the horror genre. Looking back at the history of horror films, many hall-of-fame directors have been born, such as Hitchcock, Kubrick, Ridley Scott, etc., and left behind box office history classics such as "Psychopath", "The Shining", "Alien" and so on.
Horror films are fertile ground for training directors of commercial genre films. Chen Guofu was dug into the mainland to develop precisely because he filmed the horror film "Double Pupil" in Taiwan, filmed "The Sound of the Wind" and produced the "Di Renjie" series, becoming the ace director and producer of Huayi that year.
Asian-American director Wen Ziren was highly regarded by Hollywood for the "Chainsaw Horror" series, making DC's first blockbuster superhero film "Aquaman"; and Wen Ziren's horror film director David Lee F. Sandberg, who made another super British movie with an alternative style for DC, "Thunder Shazam! " was well received.
Over the years, the Sundance Film Festival, which represents the highest honor for independent production in the United States, has been shortlisted for many horror films. These directors are in turn directing commercial mainstream genre films by Hollywood studios, and horror films are becoming a source of talent in Hollywood.
In 2018, independent production company A24's "Genetic Doom" family horror film packaged in witchcraft, after sundance's word-of-mouth explosion, eventually grossed $80 million at a cost of $10 million, becoming the highest return on investment in the history of A24.
Therefore, when giants such as Netflix and HBO are laid out in the Asia-Pacific region, they first play the trump card of "horror films". For areas with a weak foundation for film and television industrialization, horror films are the most cost-effective choice, combining the advantages of low cost, high return on investment and small cultural barriers, and can quickly break through new markets.
Netflix broke through the Japanese and Korean markets with zombie movies in horror films, and filmed the Korean drama "King", which was popular around the world, and the Japanese drama "Alice in the Land of the Dead"; HBO filmed a high-scoring psychic drama "Psychic Girl" in Taiwan. In this process, in the Asia-Pacific region, which was influenced by Western zombie films, the rise of local zombie films also boosted the rise of horror films.
For example, in Taiwan, where the film industry has always been weak, its market share has been eroded by imported films for many years, but now horror films have developed into commercial films that can compete with Hollywood. In addition to the orthodox horror film "The Little Girl in Red", it has also diverged into a variety of sub-genres, such as the suspenseful horror "The Tenant Downstairs" and the comedy horror "Report Teacher!" Weird monsters! "The Way of Ghost Talent", soft science fiction horror "Crying Sorrow" and so on.
Horror films are a highland that we do not occupy, and we can only wait for others to take advantage of the void. It is a pity to be frightened and frightened by foreign ghosts, to lose an important film genre that is small and broad, and to lose the possibility of film industrialization. Hopefully, next year's Qingming Festival, we have horror movies to watch.