At the beginning, I would like to ask you a question:
Which is the "Top 1 Horror Movie" in your mind?
It is estimated that many people will think of "The Grudge".
Because it is too scary, these two words have their own cooling effect as soon as they appear.
It is one of the highest-grossing horror movies of the last 20 years.
Not only did it create a sensation in the country, but it also swept box office records around the world.
However, you may not know:
The box office record for "The Grudge" was beaten by a South Korean film.
The latter not only maintained a 13-year box office streak, but also triggered an unprecedented copyright battle between Hollywood studios.
It has also won a lot of awards, and was selected by the authoritative media IndieWire as one of the "100 Greatest Horror Films in Film History".
It is still known as the No. 1 horror film in Korea.
Sina Entertainment
Is it really that powerful?
In this issue of the Strange Case column, let's open our eyes-
Rose, Red Lotus
Boots, Crimson Lotus
The director is Kim Ji-woon, who is known as the "ghost talent".
The masterpiece "Seeing the Devil" is the first restricted film in Korean film history to be banned from being released.
Starring Lin Xiujing and Moon Genying.
One is a powerful actor who has been shortlisted for the three major film festivals twice after Jeon Do-yeon.
One is the first Korean "national sister" who became popular because of "Blue Life and Death Love".
They all ushered in the explosive period of their acting careers because of this movie.
Why did this film become a phenomenon?
First of all, nature is scary enough.
There are many scenes that don't feel outdated today.
For example, when I woke up in the middle of the night, a female ghost dressed in black and long hair appeared in front of me, with a strange posture close to the bed......
After the female ghost jumped on the bed, she suddenly stretched out her hand under her skirt, and her miserable white and terrifying face suddenly approached......
There is also a scene where the woman feels as if there is something under the kitchen cabinet.
When I looked down, I saw nothing.
But when he looked up, he caught a glimpse of a man emerging from a stool behind him......
This kind of fear is not only the perverted and weird feeling in ordinary horror movies, but also the aesthetic sense of classical literature and art.
There are a lot of floral elements in the costumes and scenes, as well as exquisite aesthetic details such as blue and red color schemes.
A lot of thrilling shots, accompanied by a unique aesthetic visual impact.
For example, the girl who has just come home pulls out two notebooks from her luggage and is about to put them on the table.
But I suddenly found that there was exactly the same book on the table, and even the stacking order and angle were exactly the same.
She opened the closet to find that all the clothes were gone.
Instead, there was a row of identical skirts, all in blue floral patterns.
The poignant and eerie feel is rendered in place from the beginning, and then progresses through the entire film, permeating every detail.
The story is actually quite simple.
Sister Xiuwei (played by Lin Xiujing) and younger sister Xiulian (played by Wen Genying).
Two girls who left home for a short time return to the place where they grew up.
But waiting for their home, familiar but not warm.
Because, there is a stepmother in the family that they hate the most.
The stepmother always pretends to be a good mother in front of her father, but she is actually vicious in her heart.
He pretended to say "Welcome home" enthusiastically.
But in the next second, she said to her sister Xiulian, "You look more and more like your mother. 」
She knew that their biological mother had died.
Living under the same roof, life is not destined to be peaceful.
The stepmother rummaged through the sisters' closet in private, and threatened them from time to time.
Strange things happen frequently in the family, and the stepmother and sister both think that the other party is deliberately scary.
Ill will gradually come to light.
The stepmother's bird was lost, and she found the bird's carcass in her sister's quilt.
At night, the stepmother angrily locked her sister in the closet and forced her to apologize.
My sister broke down and cried in the darkness.
Because, their biological mother hanged herself in this closet.
Things finally got out of control.
One day, my sister disappeared.
Stepmom carries back a blood-soaked hemp bag......
Another highlight of the film is that the plot is full of suspense and reversals.
In the beginning, it was clear that the stepmother was a wicked person.
But what is puzzling is that the father has been blaming the girl.
Faced with the chaos at home, the father only complained that his daughter was unreasonable.
He asked his sister why she was disturbing the family every day.
The sister made it clear that it was the stepmother who bullied her sister Xiulian, and the stepmother locked her sister in the closet.
But the answer was, "Don't mention the wardrobe."
The father turned a blind eye to his sister Xiulian and had a cold attitude.
Once, he even said directly, "Xiulian is dead. 」
But Xiulian stood aside, looking at her father in horror.
The stepmother finally killed her sister, can the father still be indifferent?
My sister was so sad and angry that she wanted to find the scissors first and untie the bloody sack.
But as soon as he turned his head, the sack disappeared from the ground and inexplicably reappeared in the closet.
The blood on the ground was gone.
When she looked up again, her stepmother smashed her viciously with a plaster sculpture.
My sister realizes that she is going to disappear too......
As soon as the camera turned, only the "stepmother" was left in the room.
At that time, the most terrifying scene happened-
A person slowly walked across from the "stepmother".
When she looked up, she saw the same face as herself......
Isn't the stepmother sitting on the couch?
Why did the other party call her "Xiuwei"?
Didn't my sister die? What about my sister?
Only then did the truth surface, and it was not the stepmother who sat on the sofa, but the sister.
It turned out that there were only two people in the room, my sister and my father.
My sister came home alone, and there was no stepmother at home.
My sister suffers from a serious mental illness.
My sister and stepmother are completely schizophrenic by herself.
Vicious stepmothers and poor sisters do not exist.
She dragged the sack home by herself, but there was no blood on the sack, and it contained a doll.
We were all deceived by her hallucinations.
Nowadays, one of the most criticized points of mainland horror films is: there are no ghosts.
If everything is attributed to mental illness at the end, there is a high probability that it will be ridiculed as a "bad movie".
Some time ago, Ma Kai, director of "The Evil", released a new film "Hitting the Evil".
As a result, people were disappointed after watching it, and Douban only scored 4.6 points.
This is precisely the reason why many people are dissatisfied.
It stands to reason that this Korean movie is also "a dream".
But it's strange that this setting in this film has made many people applaud.
Others praised "the setting is ingenious and does not fall into clichés"
The reason for this lies in the quality of the script.
The psychotic ending of many domestic horror films is obviously to add to the painting snake that has passed the review.
Forced reversal without foreshadowing will only collapse the overall logical chain.
The mystery has not yet been revealed, but if the mystery disappears directly, it will give people the feeling of being deceived.
For example, the domestic horror film "Twin Flowers", the plot setting is exactly the same as this film, and the floral elements are all referenced, which is called "the domestic version of "Rose Flowers, Red Lotus".
However, Douban only scored 3.5 points, which was criticized as "cliché" and "I don't know what to say".
In contrast, the Korean version is superior in the exquisiteness and delicacy of the plot structure.
Before the twist, there were countless details that hinted at the identity of the sister, sister and stepmother.
For example, when the father confronts the sisters, he always says "you" instead of "you."
When my sister compared her sister with her own palm prints, she was shocked for a while.
My sister and stepmother's menstruation happened to come on the same day.
Therefore, the use of "mental illness" as a turning point is not only not outrageous, but echoes these suspense.
The change of perspective and the transformation of virtual and real caused by this setting also help to support the tension of the story and open up the mental side of the characters.
For the audience, there is also a lot of room for interpretation and imagination.
For example, there is a scene in the previous scene: the husband and wife share the same bed, but the father is very uncomfortable and leaves after the stepmother is asleep.
After learning the truth, looking back, this has become an incestuous drama between father and daughter, hinting at the deformed father-lover complex of the loveless daughter.
Moreover, this film does not stop at the reversal of "psychosis", but also continues to reveal the causes of the illness and the realistic psychological motivations carried by various terrifying dreams.
The source is a family tragedy.
Many years ago, the appearance of the stepmother broke the peace of the family.
The mother hanged herself in the closet, and when the younger sister found out, she knocked down the wardrobe in a panic and was stoned to death on the spot.
At that time, my sister was arguing with my stepmother at the door, so I couldn't rescue my sister in the first place.
Afterwards, she could not accept the reality and gradually went insane.
Even though she and her stepmother are not too deeply entangled in reality, they shape her as a poisonous woman in their imagination.
Blame your stepmother for the death of her mother and sister.
The essence is that she feels too guilty of her own and can only shift the blame in her imagination.
In her hallucination, her sister was still alive and was well embraced by her.
The horror scenes in the hallucination can all find a reasonable explanation.
For example, the female ghost tilts her head and poses in a strange posture, which is actually the appearance of her mother committing suicide in a cramped wardrobe.
The hand that suddenly stretched out from under the cabinet was the appearance of my sister struggling for help before she died.
What's more worth mentioning is that the movie is based on a popular Korean folk tale.
This traditional IP has been adapted countless times.
This one is the most successful, also because it gives it the core of modernity through the setting of psychosis.
The original version is a story of female competition + sisterhood: the vicious stepmother kills the sisters, and the sisters take revenge after their deaths.
The movie version better dismantles this patriarchal story.
It "whitewashed" the image of the stepmother, and both generations of women became victims in marriage and family.
On the night of her sister's menarche, the nightmare of blood oozing from under the female ghost's legs points to the hardships of the girl's growing up alone and the resentment of her mother's failure to fulfill her responsibilities.
The poignant and poetic images are full of deep compassion for the fate of women.
The source of all tragedy points to the father's infidelity.
Today it is common to say this:
There is no hope for mainland horror films, the problem is that you can't shoot ghosts.
This movie actually forcefully rips off this fig leaf.
Obviously, the question is not whether there are ghosts or not, but -
Can we use reasonable stories to touch our sensitive nerves?