The suspense thriller "Soul Hunting", starring Zhang Zhen and Zhang Junning, held a large-scale screening a week in advance, and Pi Ge watched the entire film for the first time.
Honestly, I was a little surprised to see this movie in a mainland cinema.
I was surprised by three points.
First, there are really "ghosts" in the film.
Those who are familiar with Chinese horror films know that ghosts are not allowed in mainland cinema films, so no matter how to pretend to be ghosts at the beginning, the end must be a problem with the spirit of the protagonist, almost without exception.
However, "Soul Hunting" is "against the wind", the son is controlled by witchcraft to kill his father with a knife, the birth mother jumps off the building to commit suicide after setting up an altar in the house, and the stepmother convulses under the supervision of the "ghost upper body".
Seemingly a clichéd story wrapped in gimmicks, the director can not fall into the trap, tell a new meaning, the whole film can not only justify itself, but also its own small design and small interest in it.
The film sets the story in 2032, when RNA repair was developed to treat cancer, and in the process of treating brain cancer patients, there were wonderful side effects, and the patients were out of their souls and could enter a new host and control each other's flesh.
In this film, the rich man uses the "Soul Transfer Dafa" to enter his wife's body and direct his wife to kill himself.
At the end of the film, the detective played by Zhang Zhen is also suffering from brain cancer, and he also used the "Soul Transfer Dafa" to complete the "Soul Hunting".
Objectively speaking, the stem of "Soul Transfer Dafa" is actually very old, and in Zhou Xingchi's "Journey to the West", the Eight Precepts of the Pig use this method to enter Zixia's body.
However, in a crime deduction film, it takes a lot of effort to perfectly integrate this old stem.
Because the reasoning film is serious and logically self-consistent, and the "Soul Transfer Dafa" is metaphysical and anti-conventional and anti-logical, the director mixed two incompatible things together and made this reasoning + soft science fiction film, which is a major innovation of the crime genre film.
Second, the film's picture scale is not small, and the truth is not hidden.
I didn't expect to get goosebumps in a movie theater.
The last movie that could have such power was Zhang Zifeng's strange smile in "Detective Chinatown".
In "Soul Hunting", such shots come more directly and terrifyingly.
For example, my stepmother was continuously convulsed by the "ghost upper body", which made me think of some supernatural events at once.
Then the stepmother shouted "I'm not afraid of you" to the mysterious object in front of her in the room, which also frightened the movie theater into screaming.
The witchcraft shown in the film many times, again lighting candles and drawing spells on the door, is very Japanese and Thai horror film style.
In addition, the film is also unabashed about the bloody presentation of the picture, such as the murder weapon Kong pestle that appears many times in the film is full of blood, and when portraying a series of fighting scenes, the film is also directly described on the front of the camera, the knife is red, and the sense of reality almost overflows the screen.
In addition to the scary shots, the film is also very realistic in the scenes showing cancer patients.
The same film about anti-cancer, Yi Qianxi's "Send You a Little Red Flower", eliminated the cruelest side of cancer, and presented the audience with another side of the quiet years.
In "Soul Hunting", the main creator strives to restore the truth.
In order to play a cancer patient, the 43-year-old Zhang Zhen lost 20 pounds, his weight fell to 109 pounds, and the whole person was covered with bones, green tendons burst out, and handsome completely insulated.
This shock is no less powerful than Bell in "The Mechanic".
And Zhang Junning, who has always been beautiful and moving, also shaved a neat short hair, she played Zhang Zhen's lover, played a crying drama that called a pear blossom with rain, spared no effort.
The largest shot in the film is that Zhang Zhen suffered from cancer and urinated incontinence, soiled his clothes, he sat naked in the shower, his self-esteem was washed out, he angrily scolded the nurse to get out, and then Zhang Junning cleaned his body.
When Pi Ge watched this scene, he made a sighing sound, this is the real anti-cancer, such a performance can also conquer people's hearts, Zhang Zhen should also take a movie emperor.
After watching the screening of "Soul Hunting", Chen Sicheng praised Zhang Zhen and invited him to star in "Manslaughter 2" on the spot.
Third, there is no good person in the whole film.
One of the greatest pleasures of watching this kind of crime film is "all the evil people", watching how the evil of human nature ferments and fights in the movie, and finally becomes a game of deception.
This film also satisfies the audience's "bad taste", there is no good person.
Let's start with the few people involved in the case.
The rich man will not hesitate to make a young woman a victim for the sake of profit, which is bad enough.
The son is full of anger, the hatred in his heart is deeper than the sea, he takes a sharp weapon in his hand and pokes at his father who is suffering from cancer, and he is also a vicious dragon slayer teenager.
The birth mother concocted a bunch of witchcraft and cursed her husband with death, which was a fierce character who retaliated with tit-for-tat.
In order to marry into the rich, the stepmother fell into the trap of the rich, and then the flesh was controlled, pitiful and lamentable.
His father's friend, Dr. Wan, uses technology as a weapon to kill people, and does not talk about martial arts.
Look at the two protagonists.
The female police detective played by Zhang Junning, in order to help her husband win the opportunity for surgery, privately destroyed the recording of the case, violating professional ethics.
The detective played by Zhang Zhen sneaks into the stepmother's body and controls her physical confession, maintaining the result justice and destroying the procedural justice.
The above three points make "Soul Hunting" give people a lot of visual shock and spiritual impact, but "Soul Hunting" also has three obvious shortcomings.
First, there is a suspicion of cheating by implanting sci-fi elements into speculative suspense movies.
What makes a good drama movie? That is, in the level of cognition of the audience, the audience can be given a surprise answer according to the only clue.
In "The Shawshank Redemption", Andy spent 19 years digging a tunnel to escape, which greatly shocked the audience.
If the script is written like this: Andy spent 19 years to learn the "wall-piercing" prison escape successfully, this is a kind of creative laziness, it is estimated that the audience will see it without feeling.
If the script were to go like this again: At the end of the film, Andy wakes up, and it turns out that 19 years of imprisonment is just a dream. This is the cheating on the creation, and the audience is expected to send blades to the screenwriter.
"Soul Hunting" is also suspected of cheating, it has created a concept of "changing souls" out of thin air, and then use this concept to solve its own problems, which is a bit self-deprecating.
Since I can use "soul replacement to kill people", then I can also use "control dream killing", "control mind killing", and even "killing people through the air", once the opening of cheating, this story has no edge, the film also changed from a math problem to a brain teaser.
Second, half of the film confesses to the murderer, so that the second half of the story lacks driving force.
Detective movies fall into two categories.
One category is Benguet reasoning films, which solve the question "Who is the murderer?" ”
One category is social reasoning, which solves the question "Why does he kill?" ”
"Soul Hunting" answers these two questions halfway through the story, making the second half of the film have no driving force.
Although the second half is a high-energy moment, there is a clear sense of separation from the first half, and it looks like two movies stitched together.
Third, innovation for the sake of innovation, but frequent collisions.
Watching this movie can feel the sincerity of the director, he is everywhere avoiding routines, pursuing innovation everywhere, adding various elements to maintain freshness, but finally it is counterproductive, frequently bumping into the stem.
For example, the anti-cancer element collided with "Send You a Little Red Flower".
For example, implanting memories collided with "Bomb Disposal Expert 2".
For example, the Soul Transfer Dafa collided with "Spiritual Journey", and the English names of the two films are even the same.
So at first glance at the film is very intimidating, in fact, a thought, all new bottles of old wine.
Therefore, combining the three advantages and three disadvantages of "Soul Hunting", this is a standard 7-point movie.
Cheng Weihao is an excellent Chinese-language crime film director, and his "Little Girl in Red" and "Witness Pursuit" are remarkable.
This landing in the mainland is still a bit conservative, and I hope that he can bring us better works in the future.
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