This suspense drama of "all the villains", why did it swipe the screen

New Weekly

2024-05-23 15:03Published on the official account of Guangdong New Weekly

Author | Ah Meat

Editor丨Anfield

  Title Picture | "New Life"

Domestic suspense dramas are getting shorter and shorter.

Last year, two phenomenal suspense dramas were born: "The Long Season" and "Under the Busy City". Although the two webcast dramas are very different in chronology, they both revolve around crime, and both have "only" 12 episodes, each episode is about 60 minutes.

can't "water for a long time", the good reputation of the two suspense dramas comes entirely from the step-by-step narrative structure and fascinating plot.

And this year, the trend of suspense dramas "getting shorter" is even more obvious. "The Unspeakable" starring Ou Hao and Li Yitong landed on iQiyi Mist Theater in early May, this 12-episode suspense drama, a single episode is about 45 minutes long, which can be called "one episode and one breaking point".

Youku White Night Theater's "New Life" is only 10 episodes with a volume of 45 minutes each, but it has become the first suspense drama with a real topic this year.

On May 6, "New Life" was simultaneously launched at home and abroad, surpassing the Korean drama "Queen of Tears" to top the Netflix daily list in just 5 days, and the discussion around its plot has set off a boom in the past two weeks, and the attention has even reached North America from Asia, attracting many international audiences to participate.

At present, "New Life" has a score of 8 on IMDb, my dramalist has a score of 8.4, and Douban has a score of 7.0. (Photo/IMDb)

Although the ending of the series has caused some controversy, the popularity of "New Life" since its inception is still enough to prove that the "short and concise" model of domestic dramas has made the right bet again.

A script killing of "all the villains".

Regardless of the ending, as a suspense drama certified by netizens as having a "sense of script killing", the story of "New Life" is indeed very outstanding.

Like many murder stories we are familiar with, "New Life" begins with a dark "murder".

The story opens with a young woman receiving a phone call. On the other end of the phone, an old lover she hadn't seen for a long time invited her to meet. And when the woman hurried to the airport, she only saw the other party suddenly collapse, and then was pulled into an ambulance, taken away by an unknown person, injected with an unknown liquid, and never heard from again......

When the woman received the man's message again, it was already an obituary - the deceased was there, and a good drama to chase the murderer was officially kicked off at this moment.

Since then, the story has placed the most colorful part of the mystery on a wild island that cannot be left behind, and the "suspects" land on the island to participate in the farewell party and tell about the relationship with the deceased. Everyone seems to have a motive for kidnapping and killing Fei Ke, and the story begins to revolve around the two questions of "who killed him" and "who is he".

A group of strangers, isolated islands, farewell parties, the opening scene of "New Life" can be described as full of elements. (Photo/"New Life")

This kind of narrative with the color of script killing is not the first creation of the production team of "New Life". Previously, "Disappeared Child", "Skyscraper" and other dramas had similar settings. But the "sense of script killing" in "New Life" seems to be stronger. On the basis of chasing the murderer, it also borrows from the narrative mode of the island/blizzard villa.

The so-called island/blizzard villa mode is a mystery story in which everyone is temporarily trapped in an isolated space and unfolds with the goal of "finding the murderer within a limited time". To put it bluntly, it is to artificially create a "temporary secret room" to avoid high-tech means interfering with the detective's reasoning process as much as possible, so that solving the case stays in a pure intellectual game.

This narrative style, which originated from Agatha Christie, the queen of British mystery novels, is mostly seen in traditional mystery novels. Agatha's famous works "No One Survives" and "Murder on the Orient Express", and Japanese writer Ayatsuji Yukito's "Tokakukan Murder Notice" are all classics of this genre. A large number of live-action scripts have also borrowed from this model to varying degrees over the years.

In recent years, the script killing variety show represented by "Ming Detective" has become the best model of the isolated island model. (Photo/"Star Detective")

Although "New Life" does not fully follow the traditional routine of "trapped people die one after another" in Lonely Island/Blizzard Villa, the silky smoothness of the plot in the early stage of the story does benefit from the advantage of a more focused narrative under this "deliberate" single scene.

In the first 20 minutes of the first episode, the main characters appear in turn. In such a story with many characters (suspects), the creator chose to put the characters in front of the story, depicted the initial image of the characters with a few seemingly casual "idle brushes", and then broke it through reversal, which not only facilitated the audience to quickly enter the play, but also laid the groundwork for subsequent development.

For example, Cheng Hao, played by Huang Jue, was the only one present who prepared a silk gold. Compared with several other people, his "hatred" for Fei Ke is shallow, and this way of expressing his heart with money is a habit that conforms to his professional identity, and it has also been shown many times in his relationship with Fei Ke, and it also forms a subtle contrast with his self-proclaimed "unemployed vagrant" at the beginning.

On another level, this is probably the reason why "New Life" chose to use "Blizzard Villa + Script Kill" - compared with the intellectual game built purely by trickery, this drama is more concerned with building the connection between the characters, which is indeed the same as the producer's propaganda, and has a certain social pursuit.

So "New Life" doesn't just exist to chase the murderer. Under the shell of reasoning and suspense, as the director said in a public interview, "New Life" is still a story about "desire".

Of course, with Higashino's popularity and influence in China, the familiarity and acceptance of social mystery works by domestic audiences may still be on top of the products of Agatha's "golden age of mystery novels".

The "unemployed vagrants" in suits and leather shoes and bring their own silk and gold do not seem to be convincing. (Photo/"New Life")

A "Rashomon"-style memory shaping

For a script-killing story, after the characters appear, the next step is the discovery of motivation. Different characters correspond to different motives and desires.

In the view of the Olympic bid: "The various desires in the current society are a danger signal, and we must be vigilant and introspective." Of course, the audience has an element of entertainment when watching film and television works, but as a creator, there will still be certain responsibilities and expressions, and it is necessary to gain insight into some problems, even if they may not be able to solve them. ”

Fei Ke in "New Life" is a genius who is good at grasping "desire". (Photo/"New Life")

From the second episode onwards, everyone began to tell their "motives for crimes" and the process of knowing "Fei Ke" in the rhythm of one story at a time. From the perspective of viewing experience, this similar form of unit drama, telling a complete story in a single episode is obviously more in line with people's current habit of watching "short dramas", and it will not cause the main line to advance slowly because the overall length of the drama is too long.

Through everyone's narration, Fei Ke's image of "genius Ripley" was gradually pieced together. When he was in college, he "contributed" his girlfriend Zhang Xuan to Mr. Jin in exchange for his entry into a higher level of social networking; Later, he successively deceived the trust of Su Qian, a middle-aged female white-collar worker, and Cheng Hao, a securities manager, and defrauded a large amount of funds from them; What is particularly odious is that he also carefully planned the "pig killing plate" against the wealthy businessman Chen Shufa's father and daughter, deceived the love of the wealthy businessman's only daughter Jiajia, and also deceived Chen Shufa's trust, and finally caused Chen Shufa's family to be scattered, and his daughter Jiajia committed suicide under grief and anger.

Chen Jiajia's suicide set off the climax of the first scene of the plot of "New Life". (Photo/"New Life")

In everyone's memories, Fei Ke's image gradually plumped up, and the audience hated him step by step, almost a kind of extreme evil, and also pitied his unfortunate life experience - in He Shan's narration, his misfortune came from his cheating father and hypocritical stepmother, and from the betrayal of his first girlfriend.

But like Cheng Hao, Su Qian and others, did He Shan intentionally or unintentionally create a completely innocent self in the narration? How credible her story can be, I'm afraid it is indeed worth a question mark for the audience.

What's very interesting is that if there are loopholes in what everyone says, is the truth that the story finally reveals is the truth that has been "dressed up" from He Shan's perspective?

There is no further answer to this point in the play, but it leaves a lot of questions that are not explained. And with the end of the plot, with the "end" under He Shan's tapping, it seems to imply that the ending that the audience sees is still just a record from He Shan's perspective, the kind that has been "dressed".

"White lies were told for the right purposes." (Photo/"New Life")

The plot is getting shorter and shorter,

The long-tail effect is getting stronger

Since the beginning of this year, iQiyi's "Fog Theater", Tencent Video's "X Theater" and Youku's "White Night Theater" have successively announced film lists and created momentum for related works.

Now, "New Life" has temporarily become the first dark horse, and I hope it will not be the only one in the first half of the year.

2017's "Chasing the Murderer in the White Night" is still the pinnacle of domestic suspense dramas that is difficult to surpass. (Photo/"Chasing the Murderer in the White Night")

Since 2017's "Chasing the Murderer in the White Night", domestic suspense dramas have entered the stage of involution in full bloom, and it has been 7 years since then.

Suspense dramas are not family dramas, not only to fight for the quantity and quality of episodes, but also to quickly grasp the narrative rhythm of the audience. It is obviously easier to deconstruct a case in a "short, flat and fast" way and cut off redundant branches.

The explosion of short dramas last year also pushed suspense dramas to a large extent to become shorter and shorter. Taking "New Life" as an example, the original novel capacity of this story is only 65,000 words, and many changes have been made in the adaptation process to make it more suitable for people's viewing habits in the era of short videos.

In recent years, the suspense dramas launched by the three companies of "Aiyouteng" have always been able to bear people's expectations once they come out. (Photo/"New Life")

Zheng Lin and Gao Boyang, the producers of "New Life" and the founders of Banshan Culture, revealed that the company currently has 8 drama projects in development and cooperation, including strong suspense adventure projects that benchmark "New Life", as well as romance-themed projects, live-action biography projects, life comedy projects and other genres in cooperation with head platforms, as well as several film projects in planning.

The production of "New Life" is a "difficult but correct" thing for them. However, at least from the current feedback from the market and the audience, they have been given the first step to judge "whether it is right or not".

Proofreading: Meet

Operation: Lu Zirui

Typography: Sweet

[1] For the puzzle of "New Life", move a chair for the audience Dialogue on the Olympic bid. New Sound Pro.

[2] Liu Nana. Mist, X, White Night, Platform Suspense Theater enters a new match point. Entertainment Value Officer.

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