Yawn Can’t Hack Horror
of the Dead
Why China
film
BELIEVE IT OR NOT it’s October already and
that can mean only one thing; Hallowe’en
is back. And whilst the future of our race
wanders the city like lost little lambs,
knocking on doors and accepting sweets
from strangers, you might decide to fully
engage in the spirit of the moment and
pop a scary movie on.
S
adly, for those of us living within
the borders of the PRC, options are
limited and often worth passing
over. Whilst most cinemas the world over will
be showing more spine-tingling chillers and
thrillers than you can shake a chainsaw at,
about the most terrifying spectre of the silver
screen Shanghai will witness is likely to be an
awkward Ashton Kutcher in a turtleneck (see
‘Jobs’... or don’t.)
The horror genre has always been an
important part of Asian cinema, and is often
seen as integral to the survival of the region’s
film industry in the face of ever increasing
Hollywood blockbusters rolling straight
through their backyard. But whilst many
Japanese, Korean and South-East Asian B-list
horror flicks have gained an almost fanatical
fan-base in the West, Chinese movies of the
same genre remain entirely unknown - at
times, justifiably so.
It’s not that there’s a lack of creativity or that
there’s a cultural obstacle to overcome in the
making of a good horror film here in China; the
barriers are, as ever, political. The regulations
pertaining to content as set down by the State
Administration of Radio Film and Television
(SARFT) severely restrict what Chinese directors
and writers alike can attempt, stifling the vision
and aspiration that might result in a good old
fashioned scare. According to the current
rules, films cannot show ‘content that mixes
murder, violence, terror, monsters, and spirits;
whose value orientation reverses true and
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Dom Bangay-Wilding
false, good and evil, and beauty and ugliness,
or which confuses the basic nature of justice
and injustice; played-up, detailed depictions of
crimes and the details of their commission, or
exposure of special investigative techniques;
particularly offensive killing, gore, violence,
drug abuse, and gambling; abuse of prisoners,
tortured confessions; excessively shocking
visuals, dialogue, background music, or
sound effects.’ To put that into some sort of
perspective, were the same rules to be applied
in the West, every single horror movie you
have ever seen, heard of, or hid from would,
in all likelihood, never even have been made.
Not even a spiralling orchestral crescendo is
allowed, for goodness sake.
China’s association with ancestor worship and
the supernatural has been well documented,
with spiritual traditions commonly cited as
being a major influence for many Asian horror
films. The rich tableau that is multicultural
China after five millennia offers bounteous
opportunities for writers to gorge themselves
silly, and yet it isn’t uncommon for a script or
even a film already in post-production to be
so violently overhauled that any trace of the
original is lost.
The impact these limitations have on the
horror genre in China cannot be understated.
Artistic control is reduced to merely jumping
through hoops and finding loopholes.
Directors desperate to retain some kind of
atmosphere are forced to construct elaborate
and highly convoluted plot-lines which, sadly,
and for all their ingenuity, lend nothing to the
film and undermine much of what horror seeks
to achieve. A hurriedly inserted explanation
that it ?\?[ [??X? H ?X[H\?[??\?? [??[?? ?[Y[?[?H?[[XZ?\??&\? ?\??H\??[?[ ??[? H \? \?X???]?H?X]Y[ \??]]?B??\??[??? Z\??[\? ??H ?[X\?Y[???????[?[X\? ?\?H??[?]??\?H]X??[?H ?[^Y ?] ?X?[? \]\? ? H0????
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