RIGOR MORTIS (2013 - Cantonese)

Studio:       Well Go USA
Director:    Juno Mak
Writer:       Philip Yung, Jill Leung, Juno Mak
Producer:  Takashi Shimizu, Juno Mak
Stars:     Chin Siu Ho, Kara Wai, Nina Paw, Anthony “Friend” Chan, Richard Ng, Lo Hoi Pang, Chung Fat

Review Score:

---

Summary:

A washed-up movie star moves into a rundown tenement to commit suicide, but becomes embroiled in a supernatural mystery connecting all of the building’s residents.

---

Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Separated from his wife, who has custody of their young son, former genre movie star Siu-Ho Chin moves into a dilapidated public housing building where he plans to commit suicide. The apartment complex’s security guard Uncle Yin shows Siu-Ho to his apartment numbered 2442.

When Siu-Ho hangs himself with a noose, a sheet rises from the floor in the shape of a ghost and begins spotting with blood. The spirit appears to envelop Siu-Ho as his neighbor Brother Yau breaks into the apartment and rescues him after battling the possessive spirit.

Life in the building continues and Siu-Ho notices a mentally unstable woman named Feng and her blonde-haired son Pak repeatedly hanging around outside his apartment. From Yau, who runs a restaurant that serves the tenants, Siu-Ho learns about the other residents as well as Siu-Ho’s family history of vampire hunting.

Senior resident Uncle Tung is lured to a stairwell by ghostly noises and appears to die after falling. His wife Auntie Mui contracts practitioner of black magic Brother Gau to help resurrect her husband. Gau has Mui perform a ritual to bring Tung back as a vampire while hiding the corpse inside a coffin in her apartment.

Siu-Ho learns that Feng and Pak stay in a makeshift room hidden in the building’s basement. Yin explains that mother and son used to live in 2442 until the murder of Feng’s husband inside the apartment. Separately, Siu-Ho also learns that Yau can see and communicate with the many ghosts connected to the building.

Siu-Ho returns to his apartment and is assaulted by Gau, who casts some sort of spell over the former actor. The incantation summons the malevolent ghosts of twin sisters connected to the apartment. Yau arrives and begrudgingly helps Gau bind the spirits to a cabinet in the room. Afterwards, Yau admonishes Gau for using Siu-Ho as bait to lure the twins and forcing Gau to become involved.

Yin goes to Gau’s apartment to investigate rumors of Tung’s death and the sounds of children. Mui kills Yin when he becomes too suspicious over what happened to Tung. When Tung is later resurrected as a vampire, Mui allows him to feed on Pak.

Yau finds the door of Gau’s apartment broken. The inside walls are covered in blood and Gau lies dying. Gau confesses that he found Tung in the stairwell after his neck had snapped from his fall and the old man was still alive. Gau tried to help Tung, but a struggle ensued that caused Tung to fall to the bottom floor. Gau decided to turn Tung into a vampire, but needed to harness the ghosts of the twin girls to give the body a soul. However, he and Mui were ultimately unable to control Tung.

Feng searches for her son and ends up pursued by the twin sisters. Yau recruits Siu-Ho to help him fight Tung and rescue Feng. With Yau’s help, Siu-Ho defeats Tung after a long battle. Mui slits her own throat following the confrontation.

In a different reality, Siu-Ho arrives at the apartment building for the first time. Different versions of the residents populate the property, though all of them are alive except for Tung. Siu-Ho moves into apartment 2442 and hangs himself. His adult son arrives at the morgue to identify Siu-Ho’s body. The implication is that the preceding story was a fantasy created in Siu-Ho’s mind before taking his life.

---

Review:

Chinese thriller “Rigor Mortis” has an Asian flavor very similar to the J-horror subgenre, which should come as no surprise since its co-producer is “Ju-On: The Grudge” franchise director Takashi Shimizu.  Here he partners with Hong Kong pop star turned filmmaker Juno Mak for a border-blending fusion of Japanese ghost story and Cantonese vampire fiction spiked with sensationalized martial arts action as the cherry on top.  While the cohesiveness of a concept that layered occasionally wanders absent-mindedly, the sumptuous cinematic flourishes always remain visually appealing.

Siu-Ho Chin plays a fictionalized version of himself.  Once renowned as a fan-favorite film star, the formerly famous “Mr. Vampire” actor settles into a dilapidated public tenement where he plans to escape the pain of a broken career and a broken marriage by tying a noose around his neck.  When a well-meaning neighbor thwarts his suicide attempt, Siu-Ho is subsequently entangled in a sinister mystery after learning that the unassuming apartment building is actually a hotbed of supernatural activity.

Director and co-writer Juno Mak has a clear affinity for all manner of Asian themes in genre entertainment.  His mixture of dark-haired vengeful ghosts draped in flowing white sheets (yurei), zombified vampires resurrected by Taoist dark arts (jiangshi), and hyper-stylized kung-fu fight sequences (wuxia) is delivered with an enormous amount of respect for the traditions that spawned the subgenres.  Through that sincerity, Mak fashions these elements into a kaleidoscopic dark fantasy epic that feels concurrently familiar as well as fresh.

With threads involving possession, black magic, and reanimated corpses, as well as broader themes of redemption, loneliness, and overcoming personal struggles, “Rigor Mortis” bites off quite a bit of material both visceral and cerebral.  It may not be more than the movie can chew, although some mouthfuls are definitely swallowed whole while others are torn through by the teeth for far longer than they need to be.

The greatest justified criticism of the film is that it balloons into such open-ended territory by the end that Mak loses sight of the story in moments, favoring his focus on artful camera movements and eye-popping theatrics.  There is still enough happening plot-wise that style never fully drowns substance, even when the content swallows more than one lungful of water while trying to catch its breath.

Along with cinematographer Ng Kai Ming, Juno Mak also overfeeds on the eye candy, and to a point that is arguably in the favor of self-indulgence as opposed to storytelling motivation.  Mak and Ming employ a fair number of music video techniques replete with speed-altered interpretive montages of flowers blooming, strawberries molding, and water droplets splashing in slow motion.  Blood sprays dot the lens and ceiling-mounted cameras similarly go for points of view with little purpose other than to “look cool.”  Yet as unnecessary as some of the extraneous flair is, it is hard to argue how high they elevate the production value into giving “Rigor Mortis” a cinematic aesthetic that is unrivaled by movies with similar scopes and budgets.

The industrial cold metal look with its muted grey tones is perfectly synched to the hypnotic world of a haunted apartment building that seems to exist in an otherworldly purgatory.  As an experience of sight and sound, the film has a razor-sharp bite that leaves a lasting impression in the mind’s eye.  Even though it may have a story that loses its linearity, you would be hard pressed to find a sleeker looking and more slickly produced horror film from a first-time feature director than Juno Mak’s “Rigor Mortis.”

NOTE: The film's Cantonese title is “Geung si” and the Mandarin title is “Jiang shi.”

Review Score:  80

---