"The Legend of the Hunter of Xing'anling 2" was released, I dare say: this is the ceiling of domestic thrillers

As we all know, domestic thrillers have not worked well over the years.

In Hollywood, Japanese and Korean films, and even our Hong Kong films and Taiwan films, thrillers can often be "small and broad" as long as they play well and find the right way.

However, this "thriller blockbuster model" is somewhat "difficult to copy" in the mainland.

For various reasons, the domestic horror theme has always been trapped in the trap of creation.

On the one hand, the market has shrunk significantly, and the number of thriller horror films released in theaters: in 2020, 3; In 2021, 7; In 2022, 10.

On the other hand, the "three-board axe" routine of domestic thrillers is already familiar to the audience: psychosis, a dream, hallucinations.

However, theatrical thriller horror films have returned home again and again, which has not cooled the popularity of the theme, on the contrary, with the rise of online movies, more and more domestic thrillers have found new soil here.

Let's say that in the three years of 2019, 2021 and 2022, the top 1 online movies every year are related to the thriller genre, and they have received more than 30 million box office shares.

Among them, including "The Legend of the Hunter of Xing'anling", which set off a wave of folk thrillers in 2021, has a Douban score of 6.1, a cumulative box office of 44.291 million, and a cumulative playback of 187 million, setting a number of box office records in the history of online movies.

Can you believe it? A movie that does not play the edges, has no big-name stars, and tells the anecdotes encountered by the imperial hunter Liu Erye, can be so popular?

What is a Imperial Hunter?

Legend has it that when the Manchus entered the customs, the land of Longxing outside the customs was blocked, and the imperial court set up a post responsible for hunting legendary rare and exotic beasts, called the Imperial Hunter.

According to many people's concepts, online movies, isn't that just casually filming to make quick money? Since the first film is a big hit, why don't you hurry up and make another one in a few months and continue to show off?

The sequel was really filmed, but it took two full years.

Just today, "The Legend of the Hunter of Xing'anling 2 Reincarnation Forest" was finally released.

Or directed by Liu Xuandi, or written by Cui Gozhao, starring Shang Tielong and Lin Fengye, as soon as it was released, the popularity was unstoppable.

Within 3 hours of its release, the popularity of Maoyan's whole network rose to No. 3;

On the short video platform, it only took two hours to win the second place in the movie list.

But is there any dry goods in the movie, and is it really "scary" people?

Under the halo of data, what is the gold content of this classic folklore thriller movie sequel?

With the mentality of "testing the waters", after watching the entire movie, the first two words to evaluate - positive! Evil!

Positive, the taste of folklore thrillers, positive.

Evil, film atmosphere, true evil!

The scorching sun is hot, and after watching the film for a few hours, I still feel cold behind my back.

According to me, this thriller with its "Chinese horror" is enough to hit the face of many theatrical movies.

1. Into the play: "Ghost Tiger Fighting", bird monster cannibalism, corpse hiding gold, the folklore scale in the movie attracted my eye

Many people have always had a point of view that if the scale of thrillers can be opened, the horror thriller movies on the mainland must be the best in the world.

Why?

Because in the vast rural areas of the mainland, all kinds of strange folklore and folk tales and legends provide natural soil for the horror thriller genre.

The bizarre legend of the Northeast has always been an excellent nourishment for feeding "folk thrillers", and the first part of "The Legend of the Hunter" is a "model work" that perfectly integrates Northeast folklore and Chi Wei culture.

The second part, here it is again.

As soon as it came up, there was a move of "hiding gold in the corpse" first.

The opening three minutes, the first wave climax.

Northeast deserted suburbs, bandits robbed the road.

It is enough to rob the living, but the bandits are not the living.

The bandit leader came up and opened the coffin of a funeral procession. What is the situation?

It turned out that this place was rich in gold mines, so it became a place where thieves and bandits gathered, and in order to transport the gold mines, people had their own tricks, one of which was to draw lots to decide life and death, turn the living into dead people, and then send the gold out through the coffin.

"Big brother, this doesn't look like it's hiding gold." "Hide or not, you can see it when you open it."

But the bold bandit really cut open the corpse and looked at it, and suddenly the whole person disappeared.

Because in addition to gold, there is a fox demon there?

At the moment when he saw the fox demon, the corpse was on fire along with the coffin, and in the snow, the fire illuminated the night.

Well, it's a bit of cult fun.

But this is not the official opening, after all, the "Imperial Hunter" has not yet appeared.

At the beginning of the story, the last generation of "imperial hunters" Liu Erye is taking young reporter Li Jixing to set off for Rouge Gou, but on the way to rush, he hears that the old acquaintance "Old Master Wu" who had joined forces with him to fight off wolves has died.

This brings us to the real beginning: "Ghost Tiger Fighting".

What does it mean?

In the middle of the night, the old village, two drunkards, staggered to the house.

An alcoholic snorted two ditties.

Suddenly, there was a trembling laugh in front of him, and a beautiful figure said sadly: How good to sing.

In the middle of the night, normal people must be hairy in their hearts, poor and remote, there are actually such beautiful women, something is wrong! But lust can always make people worse.

I saw that he followed the beauty forward, but just turned a corner, and then fixed his eyes, the beauty suddenly turned into a fierce tiger.

A fierce tiger pounces, and another northeastern rural weirdness.

But why do you say "ghost tiger sluggishness"? Because legend has it that the ghost will borrow the mouth of the beast to hunt souls for him.

Therefore, "ghost tiger as a stunt", also known as tiger as a fight. This is where the idiom comes from.

This good guy, hooking beautiful women into evil tigers, drinking and encountering evil on the head.

Although Second Master Liu never believes in ghosts and gods, but it is related to the mystery of the unjust death of his old friend, he can only investigate: Is it the beast monster behind the weirdness or the evil of the human heart?

Why do tigers living deep in the forest frequently enter the village to eat people?

The dark and dark forest, the blood-red tiger basin mouth, the weird villagers and the miserable and sharp call signs, instantly make people's hair stand on end.

It turns out that in addition to the folk tales that we are familiar with, such as marriage, corpse fraud, and practices, there are so many richer strange tales in the northeast countryside, and "Old Hunter 2" is cleverly using those strange and strange tales to bring the audience into the play.

Just the opening, I have begun to feel a little daunted.

It can be determined that domestic thrillers have found the right way again.

2. Entry: Compare the film with similar theatrical films, and the difference will come out

The fantasy legends told to us by those old people when we were children undoubtedly enhanced the realism of the horror of the movie, and under the coat of Chinese horror, the charm of Northeast folk culture stimulated the audience's sensory nerves.

But it really wants to completely open the gap with those theatrical thrillers who pretend to be ghosts, and the film also uses three tricks:

The first trick: the image is crazy.

Screenwriter Cui Gozhao and director Liu Xuandi are worthy of being the trump card combination of domestic network thrillers.

Chinese thriller, that's really played.

"The Legend of the Hunter of Xing'anling 2" is not to scare the audience by the ghost of blood hula at first glance, but to make people recall it in their midnight dreams, and they can't help but panic.

To do this, the film does not rely on ghosts.

Instead, it gave that touch of "evil".

The film was shot in the northeast real scene, whether it was the old forest of Xing'an Ridge, or the quiet village, the snow, the real point seemed to pull the audience to the northeast land, and the sense of local atmosphere was full.

Several scenes in the film frightened me a lot: wolves appeared in the countryside, in the night, majestic and shining.

What's more, the tiger does not eat people casually, but comes to one of the families, whether it is the tiger looking for people everywhere, or the picture of the family hiding, it suddenly gives birth to a strange atmosphere.

I was scared and couldn't help but want to look down.

In the second old-fashioned passage of the whole film.

The baby cried, saying that Master Shan was coming to eat me, and he couldn't escape!

Soon the giant eagle fell from the sky, sneaked into the guest room late at night, and sucked people's brains with their mouths.

I was so shocked that I couldn't move.

Compared with the female ghosts in domestic scary films that have no new meaning, these strange legends rooted in native folklore and mysterious atmosphere, evil monsters and cannibalisms.

Immersive and real tiger and wolf attacks.

Coupled with the mysterious color of the old forest in Xing'anling, the sense of folk horror atmosphere is not surging?

The millstones at the entrance of the village, the worn-out earthen kang, the earthen stove... Looking at familiar life scenes, the audience can easily enter the play.

The horror scenes with this as the background are simply dedicated to our psychological defenses.

Together with the thriller soundtrack, those mysterious legends mixed with local flavor followed the sound of music, drilled out of the screen, and lived in the hearts of the audience.

Wonderful!

The second is the story "Mongolian people".

Audiences who have seen the movie should know that the best thing about the film is not the image, but its story.

To an online thriller, this sounds incredible.

But because of the existence of Cui Zhao, the top master of thriller stories, it is impossible and it has become possible.

The first chapter of the movie tells the story of a tiger eating people, the second chapter tells the story of a bandit's house, and the third chapter tells the story of the gold mine owner fraudulently killing the corpse.

These three stories, seemingly independent, have actually been worn back and forth by a thread.

It was again covered with a layer of skin from Northeastern folklore.

But how many layers of the story of the film, which version is true and which is false?

The first case, "Fighting for the Tiger", actually leads to the story of the loss of conscience of a loving mother and many defeated children.

Tigers eat people? But why did the tiger that has guarded the village for many years eat people?

Also, did the skillful old Wu Tou die at the hands of a tiger or at the hands of the villagers he had been guarding?

It can only be said that tigers are not necessarily evil, and people are not necessarily good.

And good and evil will be rewarded in the end, the way of heaven is good reincarnation, and the sky spares whom.

The second story, "Old Eagle Demon Bloodthirsty Asking for Life" sounds terrifying, but behind the story, it is actually bandits who use human lives for fun,

Unexpectedly, the next second retribution came.

The third story tells the story of the gold mine owner's corpse.

Most of those who blew up corpses were killed by fraud.

It's not hard to guess, what is really difficult is how to use this story to string the whole story into a string.

What spirit night deceitful corpse to return the soul, what rat god, in fact, is to lead out the three generations of the Feng family's reincarnation scandal,

Without spoilers, I can only say that the audience has to follow the old hunter to the end and pluck the skin of this strange legend.

To put it bluntly, all the horror legends of the film are "cover".

"Old Hunter 2" is not a ghostly farce, but a process of "pickpocketing".

Third, human nature pokes people.

Interesting "folk ghost stories" don't necessarily all have "ghosts". But it must be seen in the hearts of the people.

In the end, the ghost story is actually about human nature.

This kind of reflection on human nature also runs through the entire film.

The first story is about the tiger and is about the evil of human nature.

The animals in the deep mountains and old forests are the most desperate, do not provoke them, they are all avoiding people. The reason for the occurrence of all kinds of tragic cases is that someone broke the rules of the old forest.

Why did Old Wu Tou die? Naturally, it is not a tiger, but someone who will take revenge.

But the most chilling thing is not this, but the people of such a village, who have been protected by Lao Wu Tou for so many years, but when he blocked the way of the wicked and died at the hands of the wicked, no one in the whole village said a word.

Old Wu Tou died, and no one resisted the beast for them, and it can only be said that the last tiger disaster is really unjust.

The second old story of the eagle's life is about the goodness of human nature.

Snowy night shop, bandits ask for their lives.

A room full of people are entertained by him to play a game of life and death, and the drawing of lots decides life and death.

The moment of great exposure of human nature? Wrong, is it the hard-tempered girl who died in the whole family protecting the child who met Pingshui, and the righteous young man protecting him, and the bandits want them to fight ghosts? As a result, it forced out that there is true love in the world.

And the bandits died in the end, also because this group of civilians squeezed into a rope and fought with him.

The suspense and mystery of the story developed to the end, and it is still about the human heart.

The third story, "blowing up corpses and returning souls", is about the horror of human nature.

The owner of the gold mine is old, and in order to test his two sons, he plays a trick of suspended animation.

It is not difficult to guess, what is unexpected is that his inheritance back then also came from killing his own father with his own hands.

And this father is the one lying in the coffin at the beginning of the story.

What frightened the bandit leader was not a fox demon, but because he was his father's third son. In the second story of the old eagle, he became an old monk who did not have much time to put down the butcher knife.

The old mine owner who used to kill his father can really play the drama of fake death?

But do you know that his two sons will not stage a new father-killing drama?

The title of this chapter is called reincarnation.

At first, I thought that I was talking about that reincarnation, but finally I realized that it was the reincarnation of fate.

The cycle of cause and effect, the cycle of events, and retribution are unhappy.

It is a great irony that the father-killer will eventually be eaten back, and it is also the greatest helplessness to fate and human nature.

"Old Hunter 2" does not face a certain characteristic of human nature, it is precisely through these thriller stories that it "spies" the brilliance and darkness of human nature.

All the spearheads of the story are directed at human nature in the end, evil legends, fierce and vicious beasts, and unpredictable human hearts, what is it?

There are human lives, strange things, different phases, and folklore, this is not enough, "Old Hunter 2" also adds the greatest foundation of traditional culture to the whole story: good and evil have a way.

Everything in the film is like a cycle.

There are no ghosts.

The human heart under the skin is the real black and white ghost trick.

As an online thriller, I really didn't expect "Old Hunter 2" to integrate human elements so cleverly.

This not only enhances the look and feel of the film itself, but also allows the audience, in the continuous brain burning and frightening, to have more aftertaste of "looking at people with ghosts and looking at people with Buddha's eyes as Buddhas".

Third, where does Chinese terror go? The movie gave a sample

Of course, in the final analysis, the biggest highlight of the film is still scary and good-looking.

The last round of childhood nightmares is estimated to have to be pushed back to the popular period of Lin Zhengying's zombie films in the last century.

Many years later, domestic thrillers are still being produced, but they can be remembered less and less by the audience.

Looking back, the thrillers of that era, the props are very rough, the picture is not exquisite, but it can still become a childhood memory of a generation.

The reason is that the film is scary because it is really intentional, and because the story is deeply rooted in our own culture, blends together, grows savagely, and finally becomes part of the legend.

To put it bluntly, behind the scary image is so many anecdotes in the legend, which can be circulated for so long, with its own unique charm and vitality.

The excellence of "The Legend of the Hunter of Xing'anling 2" is not only to draw nutrients from local legends, but also to visualize these legends and create a full thrilling atmosphere.

The benefits of rooting in indigenous culture lie here, and these strange customs that we have long remembered can awaken our deep sense of awe and natural fear.

It has a huge mass base, and it is also word of mouth, and it is the most appetizing to the Chinese people.

The reason why domestic network thrillers have produced excellent works one after another in recent years is that they skillfully revitalize the "collective memory" style of thriller elements that are widely spread among the people, and accurately grasp the psychology in East Asian culture - believe or not, exist in one thought.

As a result, it can successfully link deep fears in the subconscious of a certain culture.

If "The Legend of the Hunter of Xing'anling" unlocks the new gameplay of Northeast folk tales + human stories, allowing the market to see the potential of folk thriller genre films, then the second part of the series makes the story a deeper layer and returns to the humanity and human feelings behind the rural strange talks.

The film cannot be said to have no shortcomings, but it definitely sweeps away the embarrassing reputation of "domestic scary films" and throws out many theater thrillers a few streets.

The success of this series also tells us that it is never our filmmakers who cannot make first-class thrillers, but really open to shoot, what is Japanese and Korean Hollywood, where is our opponent.