With a rating of 8.8, Taiwan's explosive box office word-of-mouth work is finally here!

Good evening everyone, I'm ten years.

Taiwan's post-80s director Cheng Weihao is a prolific rookie with a rapid rise in the field of Chinese-language genre films in recent years, with a reputation and box office outstanding performance, and his resume includes reasoning criminal investigation and reversing the word-of-mouth work "Eyewitness Chase"

starring Zhang Zhen, the sci-fi suspense film "Soul Hunting" released in the mainland

At the same time, there is also a popular horror film "Little Girl in Red" series adapted from Taiwan's first local demon god boy supernatural event,

And this year, Director Cheng, who returned with a new work, completed a genre film integration challenge on the basis of the element style he was good at, and then contributed a commercial blockbuster work "About Me and Ghosts Becoming Family" that combines suspense and funny, supernatural detectives, marriage folklore, sexual identity, warm jokes and other characteristics and even gimmicks

When the film premiered at the Golden Horse Film Festival in Taiwan at the end of last year (November 17, 2022), due to the enthusiastic response from fans on the scene, the film party screened two more, and the word of mouth was out of the circle, and it became popular before it was screened.

And since then, the film, which has been eagerly awaited by fans, after its official release at the beginning of this year (February 10, 2023), also ignited the market, and the box office rushed to NT$360 million (more than 80 million RMB) in one fell swoop into the top five of Taiwan's Chinese film history list (the top four are "Cape No. 7", "Those Years, The Girl We Chased Together", "Big Tail Perch", "My Girlhood") In addition, after being introduced to the East Asian markets in Hong Kong, Vietnam and South Korea, It also achieved a good result of 4.05 million US dollars (nearly 30 million yuan)

Mainland movie fans who were waiting for resources finally poured into Douban to score a comprehensive review of 8.8 points at the beginning of the film's resource online disk release a few days ago (now nearly 200,000 people, and the comprehensive evaluation is stable at 8.3)

Below, let's share and taste, what is the charm of this acclaimed and popular annual Chinese film——

"About the Ghost and I Became Family"

Marry My Dead Body

First of all, it has to be said that Taiwan is a magical land where progress and feudalism coexist, and the conceptual progress is reflected in the fact that it is the first and so far the only region in Asia to pass a same-sex marriage law, which is also an important realistic background for the establishment and development between the story and characters in this film.

The feudal aspect reflects that it still maintains strong and chaotic folklore, such as the key to the gimmick of this film: underworld marriage (that is: the custom of the family of the young unmarried deceased to find a living person for the family of the early deceased to complete the marriage ceremony to comfort the dead. Not only Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, these Chinese societies, because of the lack of shabby movement, are relatively more superstitious than the mainland, it can be seen that superstition does not depend on the economic level)

Therefore, the premise of the two male protagonists, the opening of the film is efficient enough to pass, one side is the white lantern into the mortuary, the other is the vivid yin and yang polar scene hunting in the gym, it is established that the two sides will marry, create contrast, fascinating.

However, the director came up to escalate the dramatic conflict through a small reversal -

In fact, as a living male protagonist of the undercover anti-drug police, not only is not a gay, but also a homophobic, he successfully fished for law enforcement, with the sentence "I know that you are this kind of person", which can be described as exposing double discrimination (that is: you are gay and you are all drugged and messing around) and this is all for him to encounter the dead male protagonist who was a gay man (hereinafter referred to as the male second, to distinguish) and be forced to marry with him, making enough jokes and changing space.

It is worth mentioning that the actor of the male protagonist is the first student in Taiwan today who became popular with the word-of-mouth literary film "Sunshine", and the idol drama "Want to See You" soared in popularity.

Horror film fans have long discovered that in recent years, the field of Taiwanese horror films has embarked on a road of folk horror and adaptation of folk supernatural events,

For example, the popular pseudo-documentary "Curse" that was popular all over the Internet and was criticized for obscurity.

Haunted High School's "Female Ghost Bridge" that 'goes up the bridge and counts the steps to death'.

"Zongxie" is used to calm the grievances of the hanged deceased and hold a meat dumpling ceremony.

Including the film's director Cheng Weihao's "Little Girl in Red", which is based on the first demon god boy incident that sensationalized Taiwan, it is a good work in this wave.

And if you have watched the Taiwanese folk horror film "Corpse Memory" released in 2015, you will know that Taiwan's underworld marriage ceremony is also known as "picking up red envelopes", that is, literally, if anyone picks up the red envelopes thrown out by the family of the deceased, who has to hold a marriage ceremony with them, and in order to allow the living to cooperate with this horror and absurdity, there is also a special additional clause of "the one who picks up the lucky, the one who refuses is unlucky", it is really who picks up who passively forces people to comply, of course, there is no lack of sword deflectors who take the initiative to do it...

"Corpse Memory"

However, in the face of human gangsters all day long, he is not afraid of danger, but he has been afraid of black and ghosts since childhood, and the male protagonist who is in awe of the supernatural will definitely retreat from the time of marriage,

However, what is difficult to violate is that one day while picking up the incriminating evidence thrown from the car window by drug dealers along the street, he accidentally picked up the red envelope of the marriage that the second grandmother of the boy held by Jin Sun who took his life by a car accident.

Of course, the male protagonist who refuses to marry without being moved by the "mutual benefit" rhetoric of the male second grandmother must first experience a senseless struggle of luck and unbelief in evil.

In the process, one of the funniest bridges is when the gun is handed over according to the rules after work, it is clear that the magazine is cleared, but it is almost shot by the bullet fired by the empty gun to burst the "egg", the scene is funny, people are directly stupid, can only obediently go to the door to find the male second to cooperate with the grandmother to complete the marriage.

And the process of the ceremony also completed the portrayal of the male duo and the situation of the family, the enlightened grandmother was proud of her grandson with excellent character and learning from childhood to adulthood, and the coming out of her grandson did not change anything she had for her grandson, which is also her emotional motivation for obsessively running for her grandson's marriage, because since Taiwan's same-sex marriage was legal on May 24, 2019, she had a word to accompany her grandson into the marriage hall...

In contrast, the father of the second male is extremely evasive and resistant to the fact that his son's sexual orientation, including this farcical marriage...

And the male protagonist who has always been homophobic, as an external bystander and party, can be regarded as taking this opportunity to get close to the bitterness and tearing of the gay family, the so-called all living beings are suffering, and the male protagonist, as a person with empathy, or basic human emotions, quietly changes in his heart.

The highlight of the character of this film is that the two emotional concepts of homophobia and fear of ghosts are skillfully integrated, because to some extent, they are in the same vein, because the so-called human fear comes from the unknown -

The reason why heterosexuals do not admit to homophobia is because they are too hopeful to take literally, and feel that how can they be afraid of only a small number of people (about 5%) of the same sex group?

But in fact, heterosexual 'phobia' has never been any single sexual minority, homophobes are afraid of such as "everyone engages in homophobia, human beings will become extinct", "propaganda this kind of thinking with bad and crooked my children, what to do", "gay people are more misogynistic", "gay men and women around me take advantage of gender to play ghost ideas about me" and so on, full of discriminatory and demonizing fallacies, let alone ... So in the final analysis, it is still because of not understanding, refusing to understand, and nearly and unwarranted rejection.

Therefore, a major focus of this film is to enhance the interaction between the protagonists under the premise that the male second frightens the male protagonist "if you don't cooperate with me but have a wish, reincarnate, I will always pester you".

For example, the male second intimidated the male protagonist to help the poor stray dog find a reliable owner, intimidated the male protagonist to participate in public welfare activities to improve environmental awareness, and intimidated the male protagonist to accompany his grandmother to dinner... Although it is forced, it is all positive and good.

All of the above episodes vividly reflect the character of the male second man and the gay community he represents, so similar to the public, and how innocent and unfair it is to be criticized for conforming to the mainstream of his sexual orientation.

In particular, the male second intimidated the male protagonist to visit the recent situation of his former boyfriend, but found that the boyfriend quickly lived with a new handsome man, and the plot of his injury by the scumbag's behavior was even more strengthened by identity withdrawal, a person's character is good or bad, and sexual orientation has nothing to do with it, the film will not use the banner of anti-discrimination, touting that gays are all good, and by extension, emphasizing that there are also scum distributed in the homosexual group, so it is called equality, so as to prompt those who attack the entire sexual minority group with individual behavior, Weigh more about why your own camp is exempt from the power to be elevated to the group by individual cases.

Of course, the fact that the male second was emotionally betrayed by his boyfriend has important practical significance for the entire play, so let's talk about it in detail later.

Film is public entertainment, film is also public art, and creators who are willing to truly express themselves and have a sense of public welfare responsibility will take care of social issues and people in distress.

Therefore, this film, which is lightweight, chooses to use a comedy style to dissolve and metaphorically express, and the ridiculousness and unnecessity of homophobia and anti-homophobia are not necessary.

For example, it was staged that the male protagonist ushered in the bridge of the male ghost appearing in the "cave room" after the marriage was completed.

Not only that, the male second also possessed the male protagonist, ran naked on the street at night, and danced Jolin Tsai's "Dancer", not so much to show the foreign appearance, as to show punishment, but to let the male subject be a handful, stereotyped, strange eyes, because the hostile chill suffered by sexual minorities used to come from a mainstream group like the male protagonist, between laughter, put yourself in people's shoes to awaken people's empathy.

Of course, in addition to serious expression, this essence is also a common "selling color" in genre films and commercial films, the actor of the male protagonist, Xu Guanghan, has many shows to tan his chest muscles, his back is completely naked, and the scale of showing his hips and the hot search on the Internet is a major driving force for many fans to buy tickets and enter the theater.

I have to say that this film, which skillfully integrates homophobia and ghost-phobia in terms of theme, also binds ghosts and detectives deeply together in terms of story, namely:

The male second who died young unfortunately died in a car accident hit-and-run case, and the road killer who took the life of the male second happened to be a member of the drug trafficking group, for the male second who died unjustly and the male protagonist who was in charge, it can be said that the two cases are one, twisted into a main line.

The opportunity to discover this connection was that when the male protagonist was forced to call the monitoring of the male second car accident murder case, he successfully matched the hit-and-run driver with the drug dealer who had been chasing for a long time - this is the natural opportunity of this underworld marriage.

Therefore, it is destined to track down the process of drug trafficking groups to fight crime, and it is also a process of revealing the painful secrets of the male family, the two are "public and private", and each brings unexpected reversals.

First of all, to review, on the night of the male second car accident, because he confessed with his father that he wanted to be engaged to his boyfriend, he caused a discord between father and son, and he ran away from home overnight, and was hit and killed by a drug dealer who ran a red light when crossing the street because he called his boyfriend's phone, and after his son's unexpected death, this also became a source of guilt for the male second father.

And with the help of the male second "If there is a ghost help", the male protagonist successfully locked the den of the drug trafficking group, and even dug up his male team leader, who is actually a ghost in the drug trafficking group.

However, just before and after closing the net, the two male protagonists encountered two major reversals -

In fact, the real inner ghost in the police force is not the male team leader, but the male protagonist and female partner, she is not only a hidden undercover agent of the drug trafficking group, but also tries to eat black, designed to let the police and bandits fight on both sides, and finally the yellow bird is behind, grabbing money and running away with the big careerist,

And there is a saying, in such a work with the theme of sexual equality, it is very advanced and bold to set a woman as a big boss, because although it is a villain, the IQ hangs all male characters in the film, which is contrary to the norm of passive lack of existence of female status in film and television.

To some extent, female villains and gay men are anti-mainstream, anti-secular definitions, the main thing is to smash the stereotype, after all, the film and television latitude 'kind, assisted by the righteous female image' itself, may also be a stereotype, it echoes the reality, we usually pay more attention to women a virtuous virtue.

In the end, due to the contempt for women, the lack of defense of the police and bandits both paid the price of their lives, and it was the help of the male second that made the male protagonist escape.

In this regard, the male second father who came to the hospital as a son-in-law finally confessed that he was not good at expressing and communicating, in fact, it was not impossible to accept his son's sexual orientation, for a long time, he did not know how to touch this topic, and repeatedly avoided, causing misunderstanding between father and son.

He knows that his son is facing social and systemic pressure, but he has no choice but to silently defend the doubts about his son from around him.

Even he secretly inspected his son's boyfriend, who will live with his son in the future and face the worldly vision hand in hand, but unfortunately, he found that his son's boyfriend was unfaithful, and he couldn't bear to tell his son the facts, he only hoped that the two would break up automatically, but he didn't want to wait for the news that his son was going to decide to get engaged with the fruits of the struggle passed by the same-sex marriage bill, and he who has always avoided it indirectly led to his son's tragedy...

This belated confession shows that from a private perspective, the male second and male protagonists present understand the clumsy father's love and feel relieved and healed, and at the same time, it is also quite representative of the external pressure endured by countless gay families and the overwhelm in the face of the resulting contradictions, in other words, a family's attitude towards sexual minority relatives is difficult not to be affected by the attitude of the whole society.

And just as the title of this film's slightly awkward "About the Ghost and I Become Family", the two male protagonists who grew up with each other and the two male relatives who grew up with each other finally became brothers and sisters with different surnames, good family members, and outside the play, we who uphold the understanding of long live can better reach each other to flow goodwill, because the society of equality and friendship tolerates the differences of people.