Text| Jingwei
From "Hidden Corner" to "Octagon Pavilion Mysterious Fog" to "Daughter Back", iQiyi Misty Theater has launched three family suspense dramas for three consecutive years. "Hidden Corner" exploded in all directions, with more than 1 million people on Douban scoring a high score of 8.8; "Octagonal Pavilion Mysterious Fog" was highly anticipated because of the strong creative lineup, but unfortunately the score failed to pass the passing line; "The Daughter Who Came Back" broadcast at the end of last year scored 8.2 on Douban, which has the potential to revive the Misty Theater, but it also stayed at 6.3 points due to the difficulty of everyone.
The success of "Hidden Corner" verifies the great promise of family suspense dramas, and also makes this category a hot and "hot potato" full of "suspense" in the drama market.
From explosion to breakdown, why is it not easy to do family suspense dramas? Bone Duo tries to deeply analyze its charm and charm from the content level.
Mei: The "social suspense" gene of "family suspense"
Compared with the Bengue reasoning drama, which is known for reasoning and decryption, and is full of refreshment, the social reasoning suspense drama that focuses on showing the society and human nature behind the crime case can often arouse extensive discussion and strong resonance among the audience with profound allegory and critical awareness. And family suspense dramas naturally have the genes of social suspense dramas because they focus on topics such as family, reality, and human nature.
Adapted from Zijin Chen's novel, "Hidden Corner" is a typical social reasoning suspense drama, which not only focuses on the two divorced and reorganized families of Zhu Chaoyang, Zhou Chunhong, Zhu Yongping and Wang Yao, but also focuses the narrative on the social reality framework of "wandering" and "becoming bad" of the three "bad boys" of Zhu Chaoyang, Yan Liang and Pupu. The protagonist Zhang Dongsheng's "mountain-climbing" thriller directly explores the collapse and loss of control of middle-aged people in family and marriage relationships.
Therefore, "Hidden Corner" is not only a suspense drama that only focuses on the family, but also pays more attention to the anatomy of social issues while pointing to the family.
In contrast, "The Daughter Who Came Back" relatively narrows such a "suspense pattern". The first is to only tell the story of a family with Li Chengtian, Liao Suifang, and Li Wenwen as the core characters, and does not extend the tentacles of the family to a further "society". Secondly, the texture of the small town in the 90s presented by the play is not only a more distant reality than "Hidden Corner", but also in terms of the social background of the tide of fundraising, third-line construction and layoffs, custody and repatriation system, and qigong fever that the main creator emphasized to focus on expressing in Chinese society at the end of the 1990s, the social changes presented by the drama are also relatively shallow.
However, "The Daughter Who Came Back", which is also written by "Hidden Corner" screenwriter Pan, still weaves the plot, also plays tricks in the presentation of family relationships and character shaping - which is also the more attractive part of the play. The husband and wife relationship between Li and Liao in name only, the secretly extramarital relationship between Liao and Wang, the father-daughter relationship between Chen and Li Zhen and Li, and the mother-daughter relationship between Chen and Liao from indifference to empathy, etc., these are the lies, deception and true feelings between family members, which together constitute a picture of "modern family collapse record".
In addition, Liao Suifang's coldness and ruthlessness were evaluated by netizens as "female version Zhang Dongsheng", and in the face of "returning daughter", she knew that it was fake and silent, and in order to deceive the police, she directly cut off her nails; Li Chengtian's honest and "inferiority" evil let the audience see the complex side of human nature, as an experience of the decline and layoff wave of state-owned factories in the 90s, his fragile "pride" made him maintain the image of a good man in the early stage, unlike the property status and "sexual charm" of the rich Wang Chongjiang, which also made him endure all the way and finally broke out after knowing that his wife was cheating.
Discussions on topics such as extramarital affairs and misplaced family emotional relationships, as well as complex and diverse character shaping, make "The Daughter Who Came Back" have the basic prototype of a social suspense reasoning drama.
Confusion: "family as the nucleus, suspense as the shell" type of myth
"From the beginning, we were very clear in our creation, this is a drama with family as the core content, and suspense is just a shell." During the hit of "Octagonal Pavilion Mysterious Fog", Bone Duo had a conversation with the show's chief producer Liu Xuan and screenwriter Yang Yishu, both of whom said that they originally wanted to tell a story about a case that had a profound impact on the Xuan family, and did not emphasize too much suspense and the advancement of the case.
Because of this, although the play is quite rich in the discussion and presentation of the original family issue, from the children of the Xuan family to the real murderer behind the scenes - the personality, loss of control and even criminal behavior of all the people in the play are based on the impact of the scars of the original family, but the "slow suspense" case advancement and the narrative of heavy life flow and weak reasoning have caused it to suffer from bad reviews. In addition, "Octagon Pavilion Mysterious Mist", as the top seed contestant in the second year of the Misty Theater, its poor market feedback is also related to the extremely high audience expectations and the misalignment of genre positioning.
There is also such a misalignment of genre expectations and content in "The Daughter Who Returned". Under the lens of "Undocumented Crime" director Lu Xing, in the early plot, whether it is the death of Xiaoxiu, the suspense effect created by the monkey-faced mask man or the picture texture, there are very excellent genre performances. However, in the later period, Liao and Wang's extramarital affair was revealed, Xiaoxiu's death was broken, Wang Chongjiang's death, Chen Youxi was detained in a psychiatric hospital, and a series of plots were not strongly related to the atmosphere in the early stage. The suspense case did not run throughout, and some foreshadowing laid in the early stage did not all come in handy in the later stage, and the audience who came to the suspense was inevitably a little confused.
On the other hand, the more successful "Hidden Corner", first based on the suspense background of Zijin Chen's novel IP, has created the audience's type expectations and satisfaction. Secondly, the core content and theme construction of the three levels of native family, street children, and mid-life crisis, under the promotion of witnessing homicide, extortion threats, pushing people to fall off buildings, weaving lies, blackening reversal and other exquisite layout and logical rigor, are extremely subtly integrated into the genre of suspense reasoning, which also makes the play a typed narrative model in family suspense dramas, full of care for social problems and excavation of human nature.
And "Disappearing Child" broadcast on Mango TV is another representative of family suspense dramas in terms of genre exploration. Starting from the disappearance of a child, the play builds a maze of multi-line narrative, and as the plot deepens, the little-known stories and unspeakable secret hearts behind different characters based on families are abruptly "suspenseful" and "thriller" in fragmented daily life and ordinary life.
Although the popularity of the show was not too high during the broadcast, the innovation of the suspense narrative in the play, as well as the discussion of the topic of focusing on the original family, love and redemption, also left a good impression on the audience, with a Douban score of 7.2. However, some viewers complained that "excessive life flow and repeated flashbacks of repeated pictures also reduce the sense of suspense to a certain extent."
Genre shifts, audience expectations may be disappointed, and narrative innovation and rhythm may be weakened. If family suspense dramas practice the creative concept of "family as the core, suspense as the shell" at the drama level, which is in line with the thickness and theme depth of the drama, then when carrying out genre positioning and script creation in specific projects, how to grasp the proportion and proportion between family and suspense, and how to delicately and organically integrate the two, is a difficult problem that every creator has to face.
Family suspense drama, original does not match IP?
"Without Zijin Chen's Mist Theater, is it still worth looking forward to?" Similar to this question is "can a family suspense drama without a reliable IP support still produce a hit?" ”
In fact, due to the entire large suspense category of domestic dramas, from the early days mostly criminal investigation + suspense types, to the rise of online dramas in 2014, love + suspense, costume + suspense, law + suspense, science fiction + suspense and other types superimposed and integrated with each other development trend, domestic suspense dramas are mostly IP adaptations, and the family suspense drama pendant track led by "Hidden Corner" is the same.
Family suspense drama, original does not match IP?
At least from the perspective of word of mouth, "Hidden Corner" and "Disappearing Child", two dramas adapted from suspense novels, have been given more praise by the audience, while the two original works "Octagon Pavilion Mysterious Fog" and "Daughter Back" have suffered a collapse in ratings.
From the perspective of Internet popularity, these family suspense dramas have also shown different market attention based on different dramas, word of mouth, casts, topic marketing, etc. Bone Duo data shows that the popularity ranking of these four dramas during the broadcast period is "Secret"> "Daughter"> "Child" > "Mysterious Fog", and the IP is also slightly better than the original.
Family suspense dramas born out of social suspense, at the level of drama, undoubtedly require the main creative team to have quite rich experience and experience in family life, and be able to extend from the small incision of the family to the social environment, dig deep into the social problems and human nature behind it, and care for the mood and changes of the times. In addition, it is also necessary for the drama to grasp the proportion and proportion of suspense and family, and live up to the audience's expectations for the suspense genre. Under such high requirements, family suspense dramas adapted from mature novel IP are indeed more likely to be favored by the market.
However, the current "popularity" of "Daughter Back" (iQiyi members' pure popularity on the site is close to 9,000, the popularity of bones breaks 80, and the Douban score is 8.2), which also shows that high-quality original family suspense dramas are equally charming, but the difficulties of the play need to be broken through. Therefore, it is foreseeable that on the track of family suspense dramas, there is a chance of being able to produce explosive hits, but it is not too high, and driven by the theme dividend and market trends, there will still be many creators and companies actively pouring in every year.
It is reported that the next "Long Season" created by the original team of "Hidden Corner": director Xin Shuang, screenwriter Pan Still, starring Qin Hao and others gathered again to create "Long Season", directed by Feng Xiaogang and adapted from the writer's novel of the same name "Echo", produced by Diao Yinan, directed by Zhang Dalei, adapted from Shuang Xuetao's novel of the same name, "Gift" directed by Li Shuang and starring Chen Shu and many other family suspense dramas will be launched in 2023.
In these family suspense dramas to be broadcast, IP is still the mainstream, and the original is continued to be dug deep by the team that has been verified by the market. Who can be the next family suspense drama hit? Let's wait and see.