Rhino Entertainment Original
Text: Xiaofu Editor: Pu Fang
After a long warm-up, the summer file finally came to the 5 billion mark. And in this multi-day turnaround battle, the suspense film "Silent Killing", which fired the first shot for the schedule, is a well-deserved "MVP" in the first half of this year's summer file (June 1-July 15).
Why did this film, which is about to break the 1 billion box office mark, stand out in a silent market? And what makes "Silent Kill" successful? Undoubtedly, it is worthy of our serious review.
A re-deconstruction of commercial suspense films
If good content is the foundation for a film to get out of the circle, then the creator is the soul of creating good content.
In the film "Silent Killing", director Ke Wenli shows his commercial sensibility.
The first is a strong topic.
Focus on social issues, and make social issues to the extreme.
In the last two years of commercial films, we have mentioned "extreme" creation more and more frequently. "Silent Killing" knows it well.
Through the theme of "silence is also a crime", "Silent Killing" connects social issues in different dimensions such as school bullying, domestic violence, child abuse, sexual assault, stalking and candid photography, PTSD, etc., to achieve an effective focus on "silent evil", which greatly enriches the topic attributes of this work.
And topical topics are also the number one content grasp for this film to attract the audience and give the audience a sense of leaving.
The second is the strong type.
The first time we met director Ke Wenli was in "Manslaughter", although the young director has not many works, but in our opinion, he may be regarded as one of the few creators in the current film industry who has a deep understanding of the commercial suspense genre.
He is very good at deconstructing suspense themes into highly genre works through audiovisual language and plays.
In this "Silent Killing", on the one hand, he set up multiple layers of plot reversals, and pieced together a complete story through the telling of different perspectives to strengthen the suspenseful color of the film; On the other hand, traditional thriller techniques such as school bullying, murder, body throwing, violence, gore, and jump scare are used to bring the audience the most direct visual spectacle.
In addition to the visual impact and layer by layer reversal, we can also find a lot of foreshadowing and metaphors in this film.
For example, "The Kumquat Planted by My Husband", which is the most discussed by the audience, serves as a clue throughout the film, which makes people think carefully after revealing the truth of the story. There are also details such as the painting drawn by Xiaotong in the early stage of the film, the pigeon that died unexpectedly in the early stage, and the metaphors of religious elements that appear many times in the film, which also attracted the audience's spontaneous interpretation and discussion after the screening.
The biggest selling point of general suspense films is the plot reversal, but "Silent Killing" has more diverse perceptions in addition to this. Under the creator's sophisticated audiovisual language and tight narrative, the suspense theme is deconstructed into a highly typological appearance. With such a large dose of "coolness" continuously output, it is difficult to be rejected by the audience.
The third is the strong man.
As a suspense movie, most of the pages of "Silent Killing" are advancing the plot to peel off the mystery, and the space that can be left for character creation is very limited. However, the creator accurately extracted the characteristics of the characters, and used limited pen and ink to write the group portrait characters.
The protagonist is no exception, and what exceeded our expectations is that many supporting roles with few scenes are also very plump, which also leaves a deep impression on the audience and attracts the audience to repeat it.
For example, Mother Xu, played by Cai Ming, amazed many audiences. I didn't expect this veteran comedian to be able to star in such a movie, let alone that the comedy performance hedged the suspense theme and burst out with an interesting black comedy temperament. In just a few scenes, he showed his acting skills.
In addition, the bullying quartet also unexpectedly attracted attention. Under the director's extreme play, these four strong functional roles are extreme and typical, and they have become the most worthy of the name of the "villain" in the whole film. In the comment area of the short video platform, many netizens recalled the bullying they had witnessed or encountered in their student careers under the materials of the four people.
The reason is simple, the character stands, and the audience will naturally empathize.
Short-term pry into the heat
For the film market, when the market is in a downturn, "the smell of wine is also afraid of deep alleys". Therefore, in our opinion, this time the "Silent Killing" is out of the circle, and it is indispensable to publicize it.
The first is the precise strategy, which simplifies the complex when there is not enough time for pre-screening announcement.
The film was officially announced on June 21 and scheduled for July 4, and the pre-screening publicity cycle was only half a month. As we all know, the audience's decision-making is seriously lagging behind, and more and more people tend to observe the word-of-mouth after the screening before deciding whether to enter the movie. At the same time, the market was cold in the first half of this year, and there were no high-heat projects in the early part of the summer season. Therefore, for "Silent Killing", which bravely entered July at that time, even if it has a relaxed schedule, the future is still uncertain.
But this film chooses a less and more refined publicity route, with trailers, posters, and short video materials with social issues as the core, which go straight to the theme and hit the selling point.
Judging from the results, this "how simple and how to come" scheme has improved the efficiency of communication.
For example, in the earliest finalized trailer, Xiaotong was frozen by glue on campus to the character "tape" in the film, and all the staff were silent and cleverly inscribed the title "Silent Killing" in the air. Later, several sets of posters and stills released by the film party used the "tape" mouth sealing design, and the other poster presented the two key elements of the film, the murder weapon hammer and the blood-stained paper crane, in order to use the most concise and accurate means to focus on amplifying the selling point.
The second is to get the rhythm right.
After a rapid warm-up, "Silent Killing" boldly skipped the more commonly used screening strategy and chose to directly move up to July 3 for release.
Although to some extent, the file promotion operation has made the few pre-screening publicity and release time more precious, for a project with insufficient pre-release heat fermentation cycle, there is nothing more efficient than directly handing it over to the audience for evaluation.
Therefore, it can be seen that at a time when the market is loose, this move allows "Silent Kill" to ferment word-of-mouth in advance on Wednesday and Thursday, reserving sufficient time for the follow-up word-of-mouth out of the circle and the complete outbreak of the box office on the weekend, and also laying the foundation.
(The first reversal occurred on the day after the release)
Finally, there was a post-screening publicity follow-up, and users discussed it quickly.
In the past two years, the promotion and distribution of films have generally been postponed, so it has tested the sensitivity and execution of the publicity and distribution team, and "Silent Killing" is obviously also a positive case.
In the post-screening stage, we can clearly see the process of the publicity team following up the hot spots and adjusting the publicity content.
Taking the Douyin platform as an example, after the release of "Silent Killing", a large number of details and metaphors in the film supported the audience's spontaneous discussion, especially the role of Yu Xiaotong became the center of discussion among netizens. According to the hot spots, the publicity and distribution team also focused on the release of Xiaotong's battle song, the best MVP settlement screen and other single materials in the second week after the screening, and the joint platform launched the imitation of Xiaotong's last laugh "Silent Killing MVP Famous Scene Challenge", which has a cumulative number of viewers of more than 2200w.
Even the most "hateful" villains in this type of movie, the bullying quartet, have found their own way out of the circle. When the bullying scene in the film aroused the anger of the majority of netizens, the publicity team skillfully used the heat to promote the offline roadshow. The operation of bullying in the play and collective apology for roadshows outside the play is unheard of, and the strong sense of contrast after the play makes the audience feel the charm of the actors.
The topic is hot, isn't this uninvited?
Epilogue:
On the whole, on the one hand, "Silent Killing" has met creators who understand commercial films very well, taking social issues as the lead, enriching the audience's perception through film techniques such as drama and audio-visual language, mobilizing the audience's emotions, and laying the content foundation for the film to go out of the circle; On the other hand, the publicity and distribution team also accurately gained insight into the audience in a very short publicity cycle, focusing on the selling points of the film, keeping up with the topic, and accurately transforming the hot spots at each stage into the popularity of the film.
Step by step, it is the close collaboration between the two that has contributed to the first part of this year's summer file and the first 1 billion+ project since the Spring Festival this year.
Everyone knows that emotional movies are good sellers, but there are a lot of suspenseful commercial films in the market today, and creators who know how to grasp the audience's emotions and a publicity team that can add icing on the cake to the project are hard to find.