Time Network Special ArticleThis summer, "Silent Killing" has become a dark horse at the box office, boosting market confidence. This film is based on reality and focuses on social issues such as school bullying and domestic violence. The film can explode, not only because of this sense of reality, but also because it provides a continuous sense of suspense and sensory stimulation.
Recently, a Korea movie was launched, and the feedback from many fans was unexpectedly unanimous: it is better than "Silent Kill". In fact, there are great differences between the two works in terms of subject matter and content. Why do people associate them?
"She's Dead"
"She's Dead" is a movie to watch out for. It does have a lot in common with "Silent Killing": a realistic story, focusing on social issues, a strong sense of suspense, and a continuous sense of surprise brought by successive reversals......
Its suspense has been released even from the title.
A murder
The character of "She's Dead" is full of tension.
The male protagonist Gu Zhengtai (played by Bian Youhan) is an agent of a real estate company, on the surface, he can be regarded as a decent person, but he has a stubborn problem: voyeurism.
Gu Zhengtai has a hobby, sneaking into other people's houses, observing the living environment of the homeowners, and sometimes kindly helping them repair things, and then, he will take an inconspicuous object, such as a postcard, a Rubik's cube, etc.
It became a custom akin to stamp collecting, where he would take photographs and place them in his secret warehouse with the objects.
Originally, he lived a free life. Until the appearance of the heroine, his fate was completely changed.
Han So-ra (played by Shin Hye-sun), an Internet celebrity on SNS, she will do charity regularly, help stray cats and dogs when she encounters them on the road, and she is self-disciplined to the point of horror. She is like an angel, kind, graceful, and loving.
For Gu Zhengtai, Han Sura is full of mystery and is simply the best object of peeping. But he soon realizes that influencers are just an illusion she struggles to maintain.
For example, Han Sura was buying a grilled sausage at a convenience store, but she wanted to send a photo of a vegetarian salad. And this only aroused Gu Zhengtai's curiosity. He began to follow, tailgating, and secretly filming for more than 100 days, gradually becoming familiar with and mastering Han Sula's life and routine, and trying to crack the door code when she was out.
But he failed. Just when he was discouraged, he encountered a beautiful thing in the mouth of a sheep. Han Sura came to his company, bluntly said that he wanted to rent a house, and gave him the room card directly to make it easier for other tenants to show the house.
With the mood of decryption, Gu Zhengtai happily rushed to the Internet celebrity's room, but saw an amazing scene. She's dead.
Originally, this matter had nothing to do with Gu Zhengtai, and he could have called the police.
But he was very cowardly, wiped off the traces when he came, and sent a text message to Han Sura after going out to fake the fact that he didn't enter the door.
Just when Gu Zhengtai wanted to escape, he met the couple who made an appointment to see the room, and in desperation, he had to open the door and return to the room. A small reversal reappeared: the body of the Internet celebrity was gone, and the murder scene was cleaned.
After that, Gu Zhengtai encountered a series of strange things: when he was driving, an unmanned truck would hit him head-on; Mother's urn was vandalized, containing the murder dagger and threatening letters......
The first half of "She's Dead" cuts from the perspective of real estate agent Gu Zhengtai, and his quirks lead to the motivational event, that is, the murder, and uses several reversals to maintain the sense of suspense.
It is worth noting that the main creator deliberately added a lot of Gu Zhengtai's inner monologue, on the one hand, this can strengthen the audience's sense of substitution; On the other hand, the high degree of limitation and unity of this perspective also paves the way for subsequent breaking.
Dual perspectives
In the second half of "She's Dead", the plot begins to accelerate, a series of reversals begin to appear, and the most critical design is the change of perspective.
For fans of suspense films, Han Sula's death is not a difficult design to guess. More importantly, why did she do it?
It was originally the death of the original family. Hansura grew up in an unusually cruel environment, in life, her parents' focus was on her sister and younger brother, and she was always neglected and dispensable. She also had an outrageous operation and sold her younger brother for money. There is a notion ingrained in her mind: poverty is a sin, a cancerous cell.
She has tried all the jobs that can make money, and even worked as a waitress girl, and suffered a lot of humiliation. Han Sura also tried to stand on the cusp of the times, plastic surgery, create Internet celebrity personalities, and operate the traffic economy.
She also understands the psychology of the masses: people like people who have changed.
So, she wrote her own biography of life. He was an orphan and grew up in a harsh environment, and once he had money, he used various famous brands to fill the void in his heart. Later, she woke up and was ready to seek the value of life, began to volunteer, do charity, and established her own image as an icon.
However, for Han Sula, influencers have always been just a business. She tried her best to maintain her pet persona, and the way she used it was extremely cruel.
For example, when she met a stray cat on the road, she induced her with food, and then ruthlessly broke the cat's leg, and then started a live broadcast with tears streaming down her face to win the sympathy of the public.
For another example, Han Sura took in a lot of stray dogs during the live broadcast, but only a few of them were kept at home, because every time she finished the performance, she would kill the dogs and bury them in the back mountain.
Inadvertently, she watched her live video back and found that Gu Zhengtai was stalking her and secretly filming her. She is particularly worried that Gu Jung-tae has seen the back side of "Perfect Hanso-ra", and then she falls into a frenzied suspicion and is determined to get rid of her henchmen.
To this end, Han Sura started an anti-tracking investigation, and she had an in-depth understanding of Gu Zhengtai's work and rest, habits, and even personality, and began the death layout. So we can see that the tracking gap that Gu Zhengtai thought he had planned before was actually specially left for him by Han Sula, and the sense of horror suddenly increased.
In terms of character building, the main creator has two details that are very interesting. The first is that in order to make the death scene more realistic, Han Sura repeatedly pierced her clothes with a knife to make blood, and also used real blood. The death is also particular, and she deliberately took pictures with her camera to check it. Because her face was big from a certain angle, she deleted it and started over. This pen is very black humorous, and at the same time, it also writes through her unscrupulous and perverted psychology of playing with the world.
The second detail is that in the entire layout, Han Sura found a helper, and she used beauty tricks to drive the other party to be her accomplice. And when the man learned that Han Sura was going to kill someone, he had the idea of retreating.
Han Sura didn't stop doing anything, kissed him off his guard, and then killed him neatly, getting rid of the insider. This stroke completely established her image of a femme fatale.
It can be said that when "She's Dead" added Han Sula's perspective, the concept of "hunters often appear in the form of prey" was concretized, and the plot, rhythm, and reversal of the film were improved.
As a suspense film, it maintains tension and suspense to the end, and it is a very qualified work.
Why do suspense films frequently become popular?
At present, "She's Dead" is still a relatively niche suspense film, but after it was launched, it still gained a lot of audiences. Moreover, many fans assert that this movie may be remade in China. It's also normal to have this kind of thought.
In recent years, suspense films have become a relatively high-grossing genre film. 2015's "Detective Chinatown" opened the Tang Detective universe with a double mode of suspense and comedy; In 2019, "Manslaughter" is committed to integrating suspense and social issues; In 2021, "Rise to Fame" grafted the form of script killing with suspense films......
These are very good works, and they have also achieved good box office results. In 2023 alone, movies such as "The Final Truth", "Saving the Suspect", and "Hiding from the World" will emerge. The success of this year's "Silent Killing" is bound to inspire another outbreak of domestic suspense films.
Why do suspense films become popular? As the old saying goes, people have a natural curiosity about stories. Another point is that the rise of short videos has once again weakened the audience's patience for watching movies. After reading the classics in a few minutes, Xiaoshuai Xiaomei has become the protagonist of most film and television dramas, as if knowing the plot synopsis is watching a certain work. When it comes to specific works, each scene can effectively provoke the audience's reaction in order to satisfy the audience.
Emotions are more important than plots. This is also one of the reasons why suspense films and comedies can become the two main genres with the greatest potential for hits. Therefore, many creators have retained the audience through layers of reversal, which has contributed to the birth of "short video movies". Or, some works have begun to increase the density and intensity of the plot, to catch people quickly, and to beat people with force, as evidenced by the TV series "Between the Ink Rain and Clouds".
It seems that this has also become a reflection of catering to the tastes of the times. In the foreseeable future, the genre of suspense films is bound to become more and more popular, and it will become more and more difficult to make a good suspense film, because the threshold of the audience is also rising.
From this point of view, "She's Dead" does have reference significance. In terms of character design, the identities of the male protagonist and the female protagonist are repeatedly changed between prey and hunter, and the constant reversal undoubtedly brings a strong interest in watching the movie. Moreover, the two have a natural sense of collision, Han Sura is a false face for people to watch to gain eyeball economy, while Gu Zhengtai is to satisfy his uncontrollable voyeurism through in-depth viewing. For this reason, they do not have a clear understanding of criminal behavior, and they are as innocent as children. Such a design is very intriguing.
In terms of theme, in addition to the chaos of Internet celebrities, "She's Dead" still has room for interpretation. The video begins with a news broadcast to the effect that installing street surveillance cameras would be a serious invasion of personal privacy.
Throughout the film, there is not much representation of surveillance cameras in the film. In fact, it can be viewed from a different angle, and the male protagonist Gu Zhengtai is the personification of the surveillance camera. And the speculative nature of the film has also been generated, if unlimited peeping can punish crimes, is this kind of behavior worth advocating? From this point of view, this fleeting news broadcast is actually quite crucial.
Finally, I also hope that if there are really investors and filmmakers who try to remake this film in the future, in addition to the local adaptation, this seemingly inconsequential story premise should not be ignored. Because it hits the nail on the head of certain symptoms of the times.
Author: Xiao Gen
Editor: Donnie Yen