I don't know when the only requirement for Chinese horror films is that there must be "ghosts" in them.
But just like there is no "wife" in the wife cake.
This extravagance continues to this day.
When we're talking about Chinese horror films, what are we talking about?
"Far Cry", "Pen Immortal", "Disc Immortal" or "Beijing 81"...
Douban 3 ~ 4 rating, the birth of one after another spit.
Or can you guess the ending plot by looking at the beginning?
Horror movies are not scary, and after watching them I actually laughed...
How many people would go to theaters to support horror movies now? Of course, horror movies rarely hit theaters now.
It was not easy to appear the "Legend of the Hunter of Xing'anling" of the Burning Star.
The early horror atmosphere is so well rendered that it ends with "scary people" and "hallucinations".
Here's the point! Have you noticed that Taiwanese horror movies have really looked good in recent years.
To take a simple example, Taiwan's first zombie horror film "Z-108 Abandoned City" actually appeared 4 years before "Busan Trip".
So what about this film?
To be honest, it sucks!
In addition to the large number of zombie chase pictures in the film, there is no place, and the plot arrangement is even more tragic.
In less than 10 years, Taiwan has released a zombie horror film with the same theme, "Crying Sorrows".
Douban scored a high score of 7.9.
The response of the Taiwan market is "unprecedented", and the enthusiasm is not lost to the "Double Pupil" of that year.
"Crying Sorrow" shapes a new concept.
Once humans are infected by a strange new virus, they will not only eat people like zombies.
The virus has not destroyed humanity, but has awakened the darkest side of human nature indefinitely.
Bloody scenes such as nibbling and indiscriminate attacks are also better than any zombie movie in film history.
For those who have seen it, it is natural to understand that "Busan Trip" is really just a brother-like role in front of "Crying Sorrow".
Saying that Chinese Chinese movie can be made like this, I don't think I need a stick movie.
This year's "Soul Hunting" released in Taiwan and the "Reindeert" starring Yang Youning are also full of surprises.
"Soul Hunting" naturally needless to say, director Cheng Weihao, who specializes in horror films, plus Zhang Zhen and Zhang Junning, the attendance rate is surprisingly high.
At the beginning of "Soul Hunting", the technical setting of "memory transplantation" was thrown out - immortality.
The suspense is constant, and even the last shot at the end of the film is still reversed.
It fuses multiple elements to form a clever balance, and the "science fiction + suspense" IP universe is bound to continue.
This is not a pure horror story, but a cross-examination of human nature.
One thing to say, horror movies can be made so thoughtfully, it is really a boutique.
We have always had the misunderstanding that Taiwanese films have not worked in the past 10 years.
The main idol romance drama has been high and low now, and there are few local films mass-produced, and there seems to be no representative works.
In fact, this is related to the fact that Taiwan's film market is very special.
Because its entire market structure has not been enough to support a film industry.
On the other hand, the distorted film restriction policy, but for the theme that is conducive to box office sales, it is open to the door, and those who come do not refuse.
The production of local films that have resulted in many years must compete directly with Hollywood's strong films.
It has made Taiwanese film production companies more cautious and have relatively little room to play.
In Taiwan, audiences mostly like to spend money on Hollywood blockbusters, and the market share of local movies is very low.
Before 2015, Taiwan released 257 horror films, while Taiwan only produced 2 local horror films.
"Cape Seven" did bring a wave of local movies after 2008.
But the good times didn't last long, and the market began to go downhill again.
Because there is no good script and creative story, the box office of Taiwan's local films has once again sunk into a low tide and faltered.
In 2015, Taiwan's local films accounted for more than 10% of the overall box office, and in 2016, they fell below 6%.
It is precisely for these reasons that the Taiwanese director is lost in thought.
They began to focus on low-cost, high-payoff horror films.
In the 1970s, due to multiple factors such as economic recovery, it provided a hotbed for horror movies to thrive, creating a wave of film market prosperity.
It was at this time that Western horror culture was ushered into the golden age of controversy.
It can be said that they are all at the limits of their imagination through horror movies.
As far as Japanese movies are concerned, the famous "Strange Talk", "Ghost Doll Hanako", and "Ghost Call" series have followed.
Stick horror movies started relatively slowly, but after the government vigorously supported the film and television industry and improved the quality of technology, post-millennium stick horror movies became a new force.
It began in 2003, when it was adapted from the ancient folk myth "Rose, Red Lotus", and "Ghost Bell", which was invested by Disney Company.
Most of these horror stories are based on social events.
It began to take on a route of gorgeous fantasies but extremely tangled and twisted horror movies.
For example, the later "Teacher's Favor" and "Kunchiyan" are continuations of this style.
As for Hong Kong horror films, they continue the tradition of adapting ancient classics such as "Liaozhai Zhiyi".
He has developed a series of horror movies such as "Old Corpse in mountain village", "Yin yang road" and "Painted Skin".
In 2002, "See the Ghost" and "Three Changes" were a win-win situation between word of mouth and the market.
On the other hand, if you look at the content, you can find that although the themes and narrative methods vary according to regional relations.
However, the content of Hong Kong horror films invariably responded to and undertook the anxiety of the time.
For example, "Office Has Ghosts" depicts the false prosperity that hong kong people have in general in society.
Mai Junlong's "Zombie" is also a tribute to the last wave of Lin Zhengying's craze at that time.
Of course, for some reasons, the creation of horror films has been silent for a long time, and today's operation mode has shifted to the production of some social crime thrillers.
For example, 2015's "Blood in Search of Plums", of course, there are some classic horror film elements trying to make a comeback.
But watching qiu Litao's failure cases of "Insomnia" and "Always Around You" in recent years, it is conceivable that the recovery of Hong Kong horror movies is even more difficult.
In addition, at this time, a large number of Hong Kong directors who went north have given up the haunted drama they are good at.
At best, "schizophrenia" is used to play tricks, and the long-standing tradition of Hong Kong ghost films has gradually lost.
So in 2012, the female ghost in "Painted Skin 2" suddenly became a fox demon Xiaowei.
We'll never see Ghost in a Woman again.
Back to Taiwanese horror films, although it started a little late, it was also a boom in horror films at that time.
Before the 1970s, almost all the horror films seen in Taiwan were imported from Hong Kong.
Until 1970, "Joy and Sorrow" co-produced by Taiwanese directors Li Xing, Bai Jingrui, Hu Jinquan and Li Hanxiang.
These four directors selected ghost-themed bridge sections from Peking Opera and "Liaozhai" and adapted them.
This led to the first horror film in the Taiwanese film market.
After that, director Yao Fengpan became a household name in Taiwan as the "King of Ghost Films".
He became famous for his 1974 novel Autumn Lights and Night Rain.
"Autumn Lantern Night Rain" is based on "Dou's" in "Liaozhai", depicting a bitter woman who was abandoned by the negative hearted man, who froze to death in the snow and became a ghost, and took revenge on the negative man.
In that era of poor information, VCD videos did not appear at all.
No one knows what a ghost should look like, and the stereotypical grimace of a green-faced fang is unchallenging.
Thus, a local female ghost made in Taiwan was born:
Miserable white face, deep eye sockets, sunken cheeks.
This is an unjust ghost with undefined bones, which conforms to the ghost shape of a horror movie, but adds a touch of poignancy.
It appears in a white coat, long hair scattered, body drifting, with blue lights, mist, and menacing cries of death.
It evokes fear of ghosts and ghosts, as well as the reverence of karma.
I vaguely remember a picture:
A female ghost dressed in white, with floating and moving, with long hair, groaned weakly: "Return my life, I died so bitterly!"
This film has shaped the fear of many Taiwanese audiences about ghost films.
And his subsequent "Gucuo Night Rain" and "Cold Night Green Lantern" also won many awards.
Not only that, Yao Fengpan also filmed Taiwan's first "fashion horror film" "Ghost Marriage".
The story of the film is inspired by a social news of "secret marriage", depicting a love that spans life and death, and is also a heartbreaking process for a woman to pursue love.
Set in the contemporary era, this horror film was a major innovation at the time, and the horror and scariness of the film scared the audience to the extreme.
For example, a hand outstretched from the toilet, a dead body with suddenly wide eyes, humorous and terrible.
And the audience loves to watch, but also loves to be frightened.
This film also created Taiwan's first "ghost queen" - the long-haired and cold actress Wang Junru.
She later also performed a series of female ghost movies, and the audience applauded.
The horror film universe extended by "Ghost Marriage" is very large, and even the theme of "Dark Marriage" was perfectly interpreted once in 2015's "Corpse Memories".
Very cleverly, "Corpse Memories" uses the concept of "yin and yang eyes" in Hong Kong director Peng Fa's "See ghosts".
Being scared to see something that doesn't exist creates suspense.
In the early days, most of Taiwan's horror films were costume dramas, and most of the content was from ancient classical chi strange masterpieces such as "Liaozhai Zhiyi", "Taiping Guangji", and "Six Dynasties Strange Talk".
To put it bluntly, it doesn't have much of a completely original work.
However, just when Taiwanese horror films seem to be about to rise.
A wave of bans has directly cut the development of Taiwanese horror films.
Authorities see horror films, especially ghost films, as beasts of prey.
It is not enough to think that horror films corrupt society, promote superstition, and harm people's hearts.
After the lifting of strict regulations in the 1990s, everything began to recover again.
At this time, Taiwan gave birth to two directors with "strategic vision" - Chen Guofu and Su Zhaobin.
Since this time, the genre of Taiwanese horror films has also bid farewell to the ghost film model.
Remake a more diverse, connotative "new" horror film.
As a result, the horror films of Taiwan's leaders were born- "Double Pupil" and "Strange Silk".
"Double Pupil" is written and directed by Chen Guofu.
The route of story integration, crime handling, folk religion, and psychological thriller has also set a benchmark for Taiwanese horror films in recent years.
And with the cooperation of high-tech special effects, it has become a new milestone in Taiwanese horror films.
In particular, the sentence "Love does not die" at the end has laid the human tone for future Taiwanese horror films.
At that time, many people likened "Double Pupil" to "the field of vision that pops out of the darkest.".
Until 2019, "Demon Hunting" is still saying similar things, and its importance can be seen in general.
A commercial film director who made great horror films, but also caused thousands of people to empty alleys.
The Taiwanese horror film market has since been launched at this moment.
However, "Double Pupil" unfortunately repeats the mistakes of Li Hanxiang in that year.
The film is good, the production is good, and the market likes it, but it still can't get back the shooting cost.
Although "Double Pupil" is a failure at first glance, Chen Guofu also went to the mainland to develop.
But a "Double Pupil" has allowed the seeds of a new generation of Taiwanese directors to direct horror movies to sprout quietly.
This was undoubtedly a great success!
An important direction of Taiwanese horror films at the moment - the core is never "ghosts", but still "people".
In the end, the film points to a reflection on human nature.
If you think about it, most of the mainland horror movies seem to be the same routine.
But why the same plot, the audience just doesn't buy it!
Of course, this is a digression.
After "Double Pupil", the investor found Su Zhaobin, the screenwriter of the year.
Planned another scale that did not lose the "Double Pupil" lineup to produce the horror film "Silk".
Premised on the premise of "the first ghost caught in the world", 2006's "Strange Silk" tells about the lingering love between people and ghosts.
Although "Tricky Silk" is gorgeous and has been shortlisted for several awards, the box office revenue is still not satisfactory.
Soon after, investors saw that the size of Taiwan's market could not support such a large-scale ghost film.
Coupled with the fact that the horror fever at this time began to subside.
Since then, Taiwanese horror films have entered a cold winter period (2005-2014).
However, "House Change", which is almost the same as "Strange Silk", has changed course and taken the route of small and medium-cost ghost films, and Chen Zhengdao has once again become one of the few directors in Taiwan who can make money.
In fact, the reason why horror movies can be a small type of big is because horror movies have a solid basic disk, and few people go to see horror movies for the sake of casts or big scenes.
The most important thing about horror movies is the ability to master creativity and atmosphere.
So even in Hollywood, horror movies are usually small and medium-cost box office profits.
Now it seems that the route of "House Change" is obviously very correct.
In the case of Corpse Memories, the biggest production costs were spent on editing, special effects and sound effects.
But it was well spent.
It is very helpful to improve the level of production, and it can be said that the budget is really spent on the cutting edge.
"Corpse Memories" only spent half the budget, did not have the blessing of famous directors or big stars, but could sell for three times the box office.
The very beautiful battle of "Corpse Memories" not only proves that the market positioning and the quality of the film are the key to victory.
It also proves that small and medium-cost genre films in Taiwan are a route worth trying and continuing to develop.
It took the Taiwanese market nearly 10 years to discover that the success of concocting "Double Pupil" is unlikely to happen again today.
If we want to create the success of Taiwan's horror films, we must grasp the spirit of the genre of small and big.
Win with creativity and the ability to master the atmosphere.
Under such a premise, the choice of subject matter is also particularly important.
Making good use of your own regional elements and urban legends is definitely a good way.
Although many people are afraid of ghosts, they all love to listen to ghost stories.
So in the 1990s, Taiwan television produced a series of supernatural programs.
The four strange cases in Taiwan in the Qing Dynasty were - Lin Toujie, Zhou Cheng, Lu Zumiao burning gold, and Chen Shouniang's apparition
This is a subject matter that Taiwanese horror films prefer to quote.
Or collecting or creating many unique urban legends and ghost stories in Taiwan - the little girl in red, the face fish, the jade mountain Peter Pan, etc. have become the material elements of the "Little Girl in Red" series of movies.
That year, it grossed 11.8 million at the box office.
(The following box office figures are converted into RMB)
The success of the "Little Girl in Red" series also shows the stability and maturity of Taiwan's horror film market.
Director Cheng Weihao said: We want to create a "fear economy"!
Relying on the project of "Little Girl in Red", from film shooting, production technology, to product marketing model...
The prospects for Taiwanese horror films are gradually clearing.
"Corpse Memories" is based on the custom of meditative marriage, while "The Little Girl in Red" is based on the most well-known folk legend in modern Taiwan.
Also winning with creativity, a small number of actors and scenes find the right director, and they hand over excellent finished products with export strength to create the possibility of "desktop IP".
The "Demon God Boy and Tiger Master" in the movie are more self-sufficient to form a fantasy universe, providing a fertile ground for creativity for the industrialization of film.
So after 2 years, the release of "Little Girl in Red 2", the expectations of Taiwanese audiences are also surprisingly high.
The number of theaters has exceeded 200, and the initial production cost of 9 million yuan has finally recovered 24 million box office results.
The Little Girl in Red Company was also formed.
Even the "little girl in red" mobile games and board games have been developed.
As of 2018, the series was still unfolding, filming "The Mermaid: The Legend of the Little Girl in Red".
The terrifying "little girl in red" is not a nightmare, but a good start.
Taiwanese directors know how to think sharply, and all of a sudden, Taiwanese horror films have improved for at least 10 years.
I have to say that Taiwanese directors are very good at learning.
How to create a thriller effect and drive the topic with new materials is the key to selling!
If you can always serve different dishes to the audience, horror movies will be an undefeated genre.
They learn from the success of stick horror films, based on real social events.
Then put in some human dialectics and widen the scale to satisfy the audience's appetite.
In 2005, the horror film "House Change" directed by Chen Zhengdao was adapted from the online horror novel of the same name.
The story tells that the family that "raised a little ghost" to get rich was finally devoured by the little ghost.
"House Change" is a work made entirely of Taiwanese funds after the 1990s.
This is also a very important work in the history of Taiwanese horror films.
The second is to move away from the atypical horror movie model.
With supernatural ghosts and B-grade films, it is evil and funny, or black humor.
The advantage of this is that the audience will be more popular than traditional horror films, and there will be more things to play.
The classic 1990 film "The Ghost Story of Zheng Jinyi" is a clear example of this.
In the film, the classic bridge sections of "cloth bag puppets" and "dialing 13 0s at midnight with a phone can hit the mansion" have made many people have a shadow in that year.
Coupled with the fact that Taiwanese directors continue to develop ghost stories in the local countryside, using the situation familiar to the audience as the starting point to awaken the deepest fears of society's childhood.
Taiwan's "Female Ghost Bridge" released last year is actually a good attempt.
On the one hand, the relatively distant rural legends are pushed forward, and the campus theme is closer to the young target audience.
On the other hand, it also captures the common student memories of many people.
The script is quite ingenious and the story scenes are mostly concentrated in one night, which saves a lot of scenes and controls the cost.
"Everyone remembers more or less ghost stories of school."
It is precisely by capturing this feature that a new type of collective memory fear is created.
It grossed 13.38 million at the box office.
The success of "Female Ghost Bridge" lies in the fact that it captures the audience's terrifying memories of urban legends shared by students.
Creating a sense of appeal that stimulates fear, but nostalgia, allows the film to quickly approach the audience at the beginning.
The Taiwanese campus horror universe combines elements of urban legends like "The Little Girl in Red".
This kind of direction may also become the direction of Taiwan's next horror film business.
It will also open up a new path for Taiwanese horror films.
In addition to causing the audience to frighten at the moment, the essence of Taiwanese horror films lies in awakening the deep fears in the hearts of the audience.
And such fears may come from the unnatural changes that appear in the everyday objects of life.
It may come from concerns about their own safety in the face of social realism cases.
As an extension, it more or less responded to the atmosphere of the times in the society at that time.
Describes the unnatural situations in the daily life and the realization of classic ghost stories in collective memory.
Then, Taiwanese horror films innovated a new idea - to join black comedy.
For example, the horror comedy film "Escape from the Legislative Yuan" released in Taiwan last year is a leader in this category.
Or the "Way of Ghost Talent" starring Chen Bailin in 2022, it also exerts this style to the extreme.
In addition to this, the reaction of the protagonist of the film when he sees the ghost and is frightened represents the reaction of the audience at the same time.
This is the most important part of the film, so the casting of Taiwanese horror films is mostly based on acting skills.
Many young actors in Taiwan do not have shelves, have solid basic skills, and are willing to endure hardships and study.
Actors like Chen Yiwen, Zhang Rongrong, Zhu Xuanyang, Cai Changxian, Zhang Mao and other actors have nothing to say about their acting skills.
After all, the cheek bones are sunken, the bones are thin, and the appearance of Zhang Zhen, whose hair is falling out, has perfectly interpreted all this.
Under the bottleneck of the lack of creation of horror films in the mainland and the successive northward movement of Hong Kong-made horror film directors, Taiwanese horror films are likely to be the main force of Future Chinese horror films.
There is no doubt about it.
And the mainland horror film fans and audiences can only look at the "ghost" of the treasure island and sigh: "Oh people love, so sour!"