(There are no spoilers in this article, please feel free to eat)
"The Hidden Corner", the 2020 annual phenomenon-level web drama.
It is a suspense drama, only 12 episodes, just suitable for the Dragon Boat Festival's small holiday brush brush, and it has not yet entered the pit quickly. It is adapted from Zijin Chen's speculative novel "Bad Boy", and his other work", "Undocumented Crime", was adapted into a TV series of the same name in 2017, I believe everyone still has an impression.
△ Both have good ratings on Douban
The plot of "The Hidden Corner" is not complicated, three children inadvertently filmed a murder scene in the scenic spot, their adventures began, and their respective growth pains and several family conflicts were wrapped in it, looking heart-wrenching and real. Zijin Chen, the original author, said that the growth experience of the protagonist Zhu Chaoyang in the play, in addition to the crime plot, is himself.
△ Although he is young, his acting skills are still exploding
This is the blackened fairy tale from the adult perspective. Regarding "blackening", today I will give you another work of Amway, which can be called the classic of blackened fairy tales: "Diary of a Bad Boy". It's a novel, it's also been filmed, and I think "The Hidden Corner" and "The Diary of a Bad Boy" are really similar, and it can even be said that the former is the Chinese version of the latter, but the latter is more heartfelt and terrifying.
The Hidden Corner
It's the Chinese version of Diary of a Bad Boy.
The Diary of a Bad Boy was published in 1983, while the film adaptation was released in 2013. The novel won the European Book Award, and the film faithfully restored the original book and received an Oscar nomination, which is of excellent quality. It is based on the genre of a diary, telling the story of a pair of twin brothers who grow up from naïve romance to being twisted into murderers.
△ Family care is really important
The film opens with food shortages and order collapse during World War II, but for the twin brothers, war is far away. The father went home for a vacation, the family of four was happy, at this time they were still bathed in the care of their parents, and the diary was even more fatherly and filial piety, everything was as beautiful as a fairy tale.
In "The Hidden Corner", Zhu Chaoyang also wrote a diary, which was also the ideal world in the child's heart at the beginning. With the development of the plot, his mentality changes step by step, and he can also find clues in his diary.
△ Grandma is comparable to Grandma Yung
Soon, the war intensified, and the father re-enlisted in the army, while the mother entrusted the twins to the grandmother.
The brothers' nightmare began. This grandmother is a well-known wicked woman, fierce and miserly comparable to Grandma Rong, with a deep hostility towards her daughter and grandson, which makes people itch their teeth with hatred. The brothers were at grandma's house, they didn't have enough to eat, clothing, and warmth, and they were scolded and even beaten every day, plus all kinds of rough work, and they didn't let them take a bath.
In addition to the cruel grandmother, the twins' neighbors are also fierce. When the neighbor's house was on fire and something was lost, it was directly on their heads, because they were "X-raised", and they beat themselves, and grandma beat them again; the church maid sister, who looked very kind, not only often teased the two brothers, but also helped them bathe and played with me too, and the young mind was directly shadowed.
In contrast, Zhu Chaoyang can eat and wear warm, but he is divorced from his parents and has a very depressed life all day. He can occasionally be with his parents, and the three views of these two people make you very speechless: dad is a city man, circling between two families; mom is a control freak, life is a tangle, and lack of wisdom and communication skills. Such parents are not so much companionship as instilling stress.
△ Dad is really not a bad person
However, he was remarried, and his father's love was given to his youngest daughter
For Zhu Chaoyang, he basically ignored it
△ Mom is a super control freak
It hurts my son to return to pain, and it is also scary to start fiercely
In short, Zhu Chaoyang's original family is really bad
In addition, Zhu Chaoyang is a child without friends, and the only friends may be Math and Descartes in the book (geniuses are indeed lonely). He was alone in school and bullied by his peers: boys smashed basketballs at him, girls threw rubber scum at his kettle, just because he was so good at grades, stupid, and refused to cheat for others. Even the teacher felt that "Zhu Chaoyang was not very social."
Let's go back to The Diary of a Bad Boy. Since arriving at Grandma's house, the twins have gone from being white and pure and lovely by their parents' side to being disheveled, dirty and wild, and the smile is no longer there, but instead of panic, and then cold and numb.
People will actively adapt to the environment in order to survive, and children are the same. The indifference and abuse of the adult world gradually have a serious counter-effect on the child: the twins begin to whip themselves and beat each other to fight the violence of their relatives and neighbors. They insult each other and use up all kinds of dirty words they have learned to exercise psychological endurance. They starved themselves, not eating a mouthful of food for days to exercise their ability to carry hunger, and grandma deliberately nibbled on the fat roast chicken in front of them, and they were not moved. (This grandma is so annoying!) ）
△ I heard that the twins are going on a hunger strike
Grandma who came to them to nibble on roast chicken
You say, bad is not bad
△ Poor baby who didn't have a good day at Grandma's house
After a while, the twins became "evil children" in the eyes of those around them, and along with their elders, they were alienated from them. As the "evil" deepened, the contents of the twins' diaries became more and more distorted.
They began to implement their own distorted view of justice. They blackmailed the priest because they found out that the priest was committing adultery with others in order to demand the supplies they needed to survive; they mixed the bullets they had picked up into the firewood in order to kill the church maid, because the other side not only overtook them, but also "tempted" the hungry soldiers with bread. They issued death threats to the postman, who not only embezzled money sent by his mother, but also stole other people's things.
The "concept of justice" is a very important plot thread in "The Diary of a Bad Boy", and the same is true of "The Hidden Corner", which was very simple at first and gradually distorted later.
The Hidden Corner begins by giving us a God perspective on who the murderer is. Zhu Chaoyang and his friends are involved in it, because of their distrust of adults, they can only choose to exercise justice in their own way. Although compared with "Diary of a Bad Boy", the way zhu Chaoyang and his gang are not so cruel, distorted, and even a little childish at some times, as long as you take a closer look, behind it is the darkness caused by neglect.
As a blackened fairy tale, The Diary of a Bad Boy completely magnifies this darkness. The twins were eventually completely reborn, obliterated by humanity, and like the "wolf child", only the survival instinct remained. Originally, as the mother who relied on family affection, when she was late, the twins had long forgotten what family affection was. Their mother was killed by a shell in front of their eyes, and they didn't leave a single tear, it was frighteningly cold.
At the end of the film, the father finds them through the flames of war and wants to take them across borders to find a new life. The three of them walked toward the mine-strewn border, their father trembling, and the twins grinning and full of malice—like their grandmother. They lured their father to a landmine, and then stepped on the footprints and bodies left by their father, and successfully escaped the war.
In the novel, the diary of the day is written like this:
Dad collapsed near the second barbed wire fence. Yes, there is a way to get through boundaries, and that is to get someone to go ahead. Carrying a sack, walking on the newly made footprints on the ground, and stepping over Dad's lifeless body, one of us could run to another country. ”
△ The father who insists on taking the children across the border
The next second it was killed by a landmine
This is the malice that subverts human nature, lurking in that hidden corner.
There are too many spoilers, but Zhu Chaoyang's mental journey is really too similar to the twins of "Diary of a Bad Boy". The more you see the back of "The Hidden Corner", the more you will feel the suffering of Zhu Chaoyang.
Why is The Hidden Corner so phenomenal?
In "The Hidden Corner", the bright line is the battle of wits and courage between Zhu Chaoyang and the murderer, and the dark line is the lack of care, the indoctrination of pressure, the indifference of society, and the distortion of the heart.
If your empathy is strong enough, or you see your own shadow in Zhu Chaoyang or the twins, you will definitely feel a chill in the process of brushing the drama. We are watching the drama, but what we have in mind is ourselves.
This is also the charm of such works, using fictional reality to allude to reality. This is also the reason why "The Hidden Corner" will become a phenomenon-level web drama.
There are always some works that make us think. Returning to The Diary of a Bad Boy, the priest's words are meaningful: "They are just lost lambs in this miserable world, victims of this fallen age." ”
Go brush "The Hidden Corner", and then look at "Diary of a Bad Boy" after brushing, which can deepen your feelings.