I remember that "Secret Visitor" once aroused my very strong interest during the warm-up publicity stage.
Directed by Chen Zhengdao, who has directed excellent suspense works such as "Master of Hypnosis", "Master of Memory" and "Skyscraper";
There are the blessings of Yihong and Aaron Kwok, two movie emperors, and the participation of Zhang Zifeng and Rong Zishan, two outstanding new-generation actors;
The cast alone is enough to make people look forward to it, plus the story outline that flows out is very interesting, the quality of the promotional poster is very online, and the pre-trailer renders the atmosphere of suspense and horror to the extreme.
All the clues suggested that the film should not be bad, so that my expectations were directly full, and I did not hesitate to put it into the list of "want to see" movies.
However, due to various reasons, when "Secret Visitor" was released on "May Day", I did not go to the theater to watch the movie at the first time. At that time, I thought to myself: Since I have missed the "head soup", it is better to wait for the word of mouth to come out and then go to see it.
I thought that according to the performance at the time of publicity, the initial reputation of the film should be "very anti-heavenly", but I did not expect to wait, but it was an overwhelming number of bad reviews, and soon after the opening of the score, it fell below the qualified line, and the box office in the 3 days of release was only 200 million.
Whether it is word of mouth or box office, it is far worse than "On the Cliff" and "Your Wedding" in the same period. Such a poor performance also led me to remove it from the list of "want to see" movies, and I didn't finish watching the entire movie until it was recently launched on the online platform.
Unexpectedly, after the 2nd of the network broadcast, the Douban score of "Secret Visitor" dropped by 0.1 points, and there were more people and more bad reviews.
"Therefore, it is mysterious" is the most common word in the bad reviews of "Secret Visitor". For a movie that focuses on suspense and thriller, being labeled with such a label is quite fatal, which seems to mean that most of the bridges set in the film are not recognized.
However, Chen Zhengdao is not the first time to shoot a suspenseful thriller theme of film and television works, according to the reason, he should understand the psychology of the audience, will not make such a novice-like mistake, will he really do such a surprising thing?
It turns out that the bad reviews of the film by netizens are pertinent, and Chen Zhengdao's performance has failed to live up to the actor's acting skills and the expectations of the audience.
The story of the movie is actually very simple, and the simple summary is that a school bus car accident triggered an emotional theater of dog blood.
Duan Yihong played the school bus driver Yu Sleepy Qiao Because he parked the car on the side of the road and helped Chen Xiaoqi, played by Rong Zishan, tie his shoelaces, causing the school bus to be knocked off the cliff by the truck driver who was driving fatigue, and no one survived except Yu Sleepy Qiao and Chen Xiaoqi.
Although Yu was negligent in his duties, he was eventually acquitted because he was not the main person responsible for the accident.
This has led to resentment among many parents, including Mr. Wang (played by Aaron Kwok), who regards his son Wang Chuqi as a treasure.
Although reason told him that Yu Wase was indeed innocent, his emotional grief made him wish he could figure out a way to "punish" the person who had separated him from his son' yin and yang.
After accidentally learning that Yu Yu, who had no relatives and no reason, was unconscious and may have amnesia, Mr. Wang had a plan.
He used his manpower and material resources to take Yu To his home for medical treatment and grasped the time when he would wake up.
Then he co-opted "Xiao San" (played by Xu Weining), who was in urgent need of money because of the death of his daughter, to play his wife;
He adopted Chen Xiaoqi, who was abandoned by his original family, instead of Wang Chuqi, and also persuaded his unrelated adopted daughter Wang Chuyi (played by Zhang Zifeng) to "play a drama" after he woke up from sleepy trees, constantly stimulating him with words, making his conscience condemned and turning himself in.
Yu woke up after a year in a coma, and Mr. Wang officially began his plan.
While watching Yu Sleepy Qiao suffer from torment, and watching this "temporary family" operate in an orderly manner, he felt quite satisfied, because before that, the Wang family had been in a broken state.
Mr. Wang is a "comrade", but because he cannot withstand the pressure of his original family and betrays his love, his lover Roy is born.
The original wife Zhang Xiaoxue learned after marriage that she was only Mr. Wang's fertility tool person, could not stand being deceived and used and "permanently left this family", the adopted daughter Wang Chuyi and Mr. Wang were not related by blood, and learned the truth about the death of her birth mother and hated and feared her adoptive father;
Coupled with the fact that his son Wang Chuqi died in a car accident, the Wang family was originally considered to have completely finished calves. But after Mr. Wang's business, the broken family seems to be glued together again, and it seems to be working well:
Chen Xiaoqi is not happy in his original family, he is a weak person who is often bullied every day, and his biological father thought of abandoning him at the first time after the accident. After becoming Wang Chuqi, he not only received the protection of powerful families, but also gained a doting "father", so he was 100% hopeful that life could continue like this.
The fake Mrs. Wang is in urgent need of money, and second, she hopes to experience the feeling of motherhood again through the performance, so in the period after the accident, she can also accept such a state of life safely.
As for Wang Chuyi, in the process of getting along with Yu Sleepy Tree, she unexpectedly felt the warmth from her father because the paintings were recognized, and she even had a little confusion about Sleepy Tree for a long time, so she also briefly enjoyed this kind of life.
However, the variables eventually happened to the trapped tree.
Mr. Wang originally thought that under their constant stimulation, Yu Yu would eventually turn himself in because of the torment of conscience.
But I didn't expect that Yu Qiao had a cowardly and lonely personality, and even if he was tortured, he did not want to turn himself in, but instead enjoyed the life under the fence, staying in the basement of the Wang family for three years.
Yu's "cheeky face" makes Mrs. Wang and Wang Chuyi a little intolerable, because the former has found true love again after adjustment, and is pregnant with each other's children, eager to live a new life;
The latter hopes to get rid of this abnormal family life as soon as possible, either to let Yu Qiao turn himself in as soon as possible and end this "temporary family", or to escape from Yu Qiao and leave Mr. Wang's control.
However, Mr. Wang and Wang Chuqi obviously did not want to disband the family, so the four of them began to wrestle over what kind of choice to let Yu Yu make.
The narrative of "The Secret Visitor" focuses on the struggle between the scenes and saves the truth for the last time it is exposed.
Since the audience is in a state of ignorance of the truth at the beginning, according to the various suspicious performances of the Wang family, as well as under the rendering of the hades soundtrack and filters, it is easy to have various terrible associations.
However, after being scared for most of the movie, it was finally found that the truth was just a family acting in a dog blood emotional drama, and it was inevitable that this would be the feeling of "making things up".
However, "therefore mysterious" is not entirely undesirable, because in 2001, "Mulholland Road" directed by David Lynch had a similar narrative. But the difference is that "Mulholland Road" is called "brain-burning god work".
"Mulholland Road" also has a very simple story, which can be summed up in one sentence: the young women of the town are crazy for love.
The film tells the story of Diana, a girl who came to Hollywood from a small town, to meet and fall in love with another girl who worked hard in Hollywood, Kamina, but as Camina mixed better and better in the film circle, the relationship between the two began to gradually crack.
Finally, Kamina took the well-known director Adam and announced the marriage in front of Diana, which made the jealous Diana dizzy and secretly bought and killed Kamina.
But when Diana gets evidence of Kamina's death from the killer, grief gushes out and causes her to have a nervous breakdown, and in order to escape reality, she chooses to immerse herself in sleep and paralyze herself, hoping to wake up to find that everything is just a dream.
Much of the plot of Mulholland Drive is about diana's escapist dream.
Like "The Secret Visitor", "Mulholland Road" also chooses to put the truth in the last sexual exposure, and the audience is receiving some messy information during the viewing process, and associating various terrible plots under various atmospheric renderings.
With a large"sham" plot to cover up a small part of the truth, the narrative of "Mulholland Road" can also be called "mysterious" to some extent. But why is its reputation so different from "The Secret Visitor" that it can even become a "brain-burning masterpiece"?
I think there are three main reasons:
One: "The Secret Visitor" contains too many topics that cannot be explained thoroughly in a movie.
Each of the 5 members of the Wang family has their own secrets, including many sensitive topics such as "comrade", "yearless love", "bullying", "original family" and so on, each of which has an independent story line, which can also be compiled into a very full plot.
However, due to the length of the movie, these topics can only be fleeting like dragonflies, and eventually become the embellishment elements of Bo eyeballs.
Coupled with the narrative style that causes the audience to immerse themselves in the conjecture of the plot most of the time, it is difficult to be provoked by these topics to think deeply, and eventually there will be a perception that the film is "greedy and chewy"
In "Mulholland Road", although there are also topics such as "comrades", "low-level people", "power manipulation", etc., they all serve Diana alone, and they can play a complementary role with each other.
Although it is affected by the narrative style and it is difficult for the audience to think deeply for a while, in the process of reminiscing after watching the film, it is easy to trigger corresponding resonance in the process of combing the truth, so that people feel cleverly conceived.
Second: The foreshadowing of "Mulholland Road" is very secretive, and "Secret Visitor" not only lacks foreshadowing, but also deliberately conceals clues.
Most of the plot of "Mulholland Road" is a dream, in fact, at the beginning of the film, through a montage dance competition flashback and the heroine falling asleep, it is implied that the next story is a dream.
Although before the truth is revealed, the audience will not understand the relationship between these messy pictures and the story at the beginning, when the truth is revealed, this seemingly inexplicable design will make people feel that it is a clever preparation, which is simply a stroke of God.
In "Secret Visitor", Chen Zhengdao chose to complete a "time and space jump" through the storyboard, putting the audience into the perspective of Yu Sleepy, making people mistakenly think that his fainting and waking up were shortly after, and concealed that Mr. Wang spent a year to lay out.
Although this design is also very clever, in the end, the director chose to rely on Mr. Wang's dictation to reveal the technique, but instead made this setting that could have been a foreshadowing a small trick to deliberately conceal clues, so that the style of the film was instantly lowered by a notch.
Third: The tragic ending of "Mulholland Road" sublimates the characters, and the inexplicable ending of "The Secret Visitor" blinds everyone.
In the ending of "Mulholland Road", Diana wakes up from her sleep to find that everything has become impossible to turn back, and finally chooses to end her life. The tragic ending makes the tragic color of this low-level girl more intense, in addition to lamenting the powerlessness of the little people when they fight against fate, it also indicts the ruthlessness of Hollywood.
In contrast, the ending of "Secret Visitor", because Yu Yuqiao canceled the prosecution, Mr. Wang's behavior did not constitute a very restrictive, only a slight punishment, which was nothing for a powerful and psychologically twisted person, and the situation did not change.
In the end, the other 4 people invariably chose to return to the Wang family mansion, Yu Qiao and Wang Chuqi could understand because they had nowhere to go, but Mrs. Wang and Wang Chuyi could obviously leave this family, what was the reason for their return?
Was it because Wang Chuqi blew a trumpet for Wang Chuyi that touched her?
Is it because Mr. Wang made a touching remark at the "Last Supper" that Mrs. Wang changed her mind?
The film stops abruptly when the trapped tree returns to the gate of the Wang family, neither burying the corresponding foreshadowing in front, nor explaining to the audience the intention of the ending, which makes people feel blinded.
In summary, compared with "Mulholland Road", "The Secret Visitor" wants to express too many things, but due to the length of the movie, it falls into the dilemma of "greed and chewing", and not only does not lay enough preparation in the plot design, but also appears to be swallowed at the end, so it is easy to be criticized.
Therefore, it is also in the "so mysterious", "Secret Visitor" has a poor reputation, "Mulholland Road" can be sealed, obviously due to the gap in the level of directors, Chen Zhengdao wants to shoot the texture of David Lynch, there is still a long way to catch up.
I am a wooden branch of the dangerous building, everyone on the "3 days of release of word of mouth collapsed, the network broadcast 2 days of the rating is lower, why is "Secret Visitor" not welcomed? "What's the point? Feel free to leave your comments below.
#电影秘密访客 #