Unexpectedly, a horror film with a small audience can become so popular!
As soon as the preview was released last year, it went out of the circle at the speed of light, and it spread all over the network before seeing its true face.
Released in Taiwan in March this year, it defeated the British blockbuster Batman in the same period and won the box office champion for many weeks. At present, it has created the highest box office for Taiwanese Mandarin films in 2022.
It was once called “the most terrifying film in Taiwan’s film history”. It was said that after watching it, the audience went directly to the temple to find master to calm down.
The publicity in the early stage was full of gimmicks. After Netflix went online, it immediately rushed to the top of the Douban hot list.
But unexpectedly, the score plunged from 8.0 to 6.8 overnight, and even was scolded on the hot search. Many people who have seen it call it “bad luck”.
How about the quality of this movie? Let’s talk about it today – “Curse”
This article involves spoilers, containing high-energy pictures. Friends who care can collect them first.
Friends who are more concerned about religious beliefs, please also choose to watch this film carefully.
Timid slide straight to the end.
Do you believe in blessing?
Do you know that human will can change the result of things?
For example, try to look at the ferris wheel in the picture, turn left or right;
Whether the train is moving forward or backward;
Can be controlled through the mind, which is the principle of blessing.
The opening of “Curse” is very special. The female host Ruo man slowly spoke these words to the camera, allowing the audience in front of the screen to participate, which aroused everyone’s curiosity at the beginning.
If the man was unable to take care of his daughter Duoduo because of his poor mental state, he put her in a foster home.
Not long ago, I picked up my daughter only after my spirit improved.
For this reason, she bought a camera to take pictures of her daughter’s life as a souvenir.
Therefore, we see that many pictures in the film are the perspective recorded by her camera.
The first thing for Ruonan to come home is to teach Duo Duo to read and write her name: Chen Letong.
This is the first time for her daughter to read her name, and it is also a warm moment for the two of them.
Soon, strange things happened one after another.
The glass of the window suddenly cracked, the light went out for unknown reasons, the toilet automatically began to flush, and strange worms appeared around her
What’s more terrible is the daughter’s strange behavior.
Sleepwalking in the middle of the night, like being possessed, constantly reading their names;
Pointing to the ceiling and saying “bad bad”, let mom lead it out.
Because I often see “no face bad”, I am also excluded by the children in the kindergarten.
When her mother talked with the intermediary, Duoduo talked to an invisible thing, and was guided to climb to the roof and jump down;
Strangely, she climbed up unharmed again, holding a knife in her hand.
Then he was taken into a room dedicated to gods and turned on the DV machine that Ruonan put there.
After that, Duoduo’s body began to change seriously.
His legs were suddenly paralyzed and unable to walk. Four rows of teeth grew out of his mouth, and his skin began to fester in a large area.
All this is because, six years ago, she violated the terrible taboo.
At that time, Ruo Nan, her boyfriend a Dong, and a yuan, a brother of a Dong, formed a “ghost breaking secret service team” to shoot some folk tricks and put them on the Internet to earn traffic.
At the invitation of their uncle, they came to the brothers’ hometown Chenjia village to participate in the annual “worship ceremony”.
This village is very strange, old and dilapidated, and it exudes an unusual sense of strangeness everywhere. People greet each other with a strange gesture.
This is the sign of their believers. The God believed by the villagers here is called the great black Buddha mother.
As required, the Three wrote their names on the rune paper. The grandmother holding the ceremony said that this represented that their names had been dedicated to the Mother Buddha.
From now on, you can’t use it, and you can’t think about it in your heart.
At the same time, there is also the child in Ruo man’s belly.
Grandma said that the Buddha mother liked the child, and she even directly said the child’s gender.
A little girl they met in the village was the one chosen by the gods.
The girl was cut off an ear as a tribute to the Buddha mother to bless everyone.
It doesn’t look like a God’s style anyway.
Villagers held a ceremony to send gods at night. They secretly tracked and photographed the picture, and saw the little girl’s body full of scriptures, which was placed at the entrance of the tunnel.
On the surface, the three came back to participate in the ceremony, and their real purpose was to visit the “absolutely inaccessible tunnel” in the village.
The brothers broke into the tunnel without listening to the dissuasion of the villagers and the girl.
As a result, ah Dong died in the tunnel, and his younger brother, ah yuan, ran out like crazy. He kept shouting “don’t ask”, and finally jumped out of a building in the village to commit suicide.
Don’t ask what? What’s the secret in the tunnel? Everything was recorded in the DV brought out by ayahara.
Their intrusion angered the Buddha mother, causing the whole village to be cursed.
If the man escaped because he didn’t enter the tunnel and was pregnant, but she brought the curse home with the DV.
Misfortune happened to all the people around her who had seen DV.
Her parents died in a bizarre car accident. The police swallowed a gun and committed suicide after receiving her case, which put her daughter’s life on the line.
This is why at the beginning of the film, if the man said the meaning of “blessing” to the camera.
She hopes everyone in front of the screen can help resolve the misfortune of her daughter.
The practice is very simple, remember this symbol;
Then read along with her: “fire Buddha Xiuyi, heart samam moo”.
She said that this is an ancient religious blessing. The more people recite it together, the stronger the blessing will be, and it can help her daughter tide over the difficulties.
The story of “Curse” is actually very simple. A desperate mother wants to break the curse on her daughter and save her daughter.
The film is shot from the perspective of a large number of “pseudo documentaries”.
Whether six years ago or now, the picture is almost composed of shooting materials such as DV, camera and surveillance video. The rough and shaking pictures increased the uneasiness of the audience.
But then again, pseudo documentary style shooting techniques have long been common in horror films.
But what’s clever about mantra is that it brings the audience into the game with a strong interactive approach at the beginning.
It allows the hostess to tell everyone in front of the screen all kinds of strange things that happened to her daughter in the same way as live broadcast, asking everyone to help her, and the audience has become an indispensable part of the film.
This is not only an advantage, but also a reason for being scolded and unlucky.
She has been using videos to show her love for her daughter and her despair to gain sympathy.
Until finally, if the man enters the tunnel, the biggest suspense of the film: the video in DV and the true meaning of the God, the great black Buddha mother, has revealed the answer.
The mantra “fire Buddha cultivates one, heart Sammo” is actually a homonym of the Minnan language “misfortune and fortune depend on each other, and death and life are famous”, which does not mean blessing.
Reading this mantra means that you are willing to share the curse and give your name. The more people join, the power of the curse will be diluted.
In other words, the audience has unknowingly borne the curse.
The director used a unique design to explain the meaning of the Buddha mother and the mantra word by word in the context of symbols, and the audience must concentrate on the words in the middle.
After that, the picture turned to white screen. Because of the visual residue, only the remnants of religious symbols were left in my eyes.
In the film, the mantra, as the background sound, has always been pronounced in the form of “homai”. It sounds very evil and brainwashed, making people unconsciously pronounce it together.
With the explanation of “the deeper you gaze, the more you bear”, many viewers not only feel angry but also full of malice.
The whole film is like a cult ceremony from beginning to end, tricking the audience into participating. With this interactive image expression, people are deeply involved.
But from another point of view, being scolded also just shows that the director’s goal has been achieved. He used interactive expression, psychological suggestion, visual residue and so on, so many settings, is to bring this terrible atmosphere to reality.
As a horror movie, it makes you fear in your heart, and it has been successful.
The director also stressed that the mantra of the film and the Great Buddha mother’s teachings were all made up by him, and we must not have any burden in this regard.
Back to the movie “Curse”, as a horror movie, many elements in the film are uncomfortable rather than scary.
Cockroaches, frogs and worms are easy to associate with the “witchcraft” spread from some ethnic minorities.
Blood seeping holes in the ceiling of the Buddha mother temple, festering holes in the skin… And the true face of the Buddha mother, which makes the patients’ scalp numb.
Compared with the plasma stimulation, these are not directly harmful to people, but can provoke the horror of the audience.
Another horror of the mantra lies in the setting of the character Li Ruonan.
When you repeat the whole story again, you will find another brilliance of the director.
On the surface, “mantra” tells a story of maternal love, but when you think about it carefully, it seems that there is something wrong.
First of all, the way the hostess takes life records is very deliberate, no matter how big or small, even if she is scared, she doesn’t forget to pick up the camera first, as if she is completing a task.
When she was pregnant, she knew that the spell was a curse, and that her name could not be mentioned after being dedicated to the Mother Buddha. However, on the first day of her daughter’s arrival, she taught her to read her name, put out religious symbols with her daughter’s colored pen.
After Duoduo got sick, she took her daughter to find God and God to cast spells for treatment. Obviously, she was told that she couldn’t eat for seven days and seven nights. She still fed her daughter canned pineapples.
This also directly led to the death of God and the possession of God and woman.
This paragraph has a meaningful design.
If the man brings his daughter back to find shenpo, the gods in the temple suddenly turn their backs after they come in, suggesting that the gods cannot resist the curse.
Similarly, Xie Qiming, the dean who took care of Duoduo in the foster home, suffered accidents.
Because of her feelings for Duoduo, she was also moved by Ruonan’s maternal love. She wanted to help her investigate the root cause of the curse, find a way to solve it, take DV back to repair it, and also went to Yunnan to visit the master to learn about the background of the great black Buddha mother.
Just after he sent these messages to Ruonan, he was evil, read his name, and slammed his head to death.
Ruonan, who knew the truth of the curse, didn’t stop Xie Qiming from joining in at the beginning.
Is all this a hoax by Ruo man?
Saving her daughter is just a cover. It may be her intention to let all good people, including the audience, enter the game together and bear the curse.
This may also be what the director wants to express. The horror is not the curse, but the malice of people.