"Kunchiyan" is really a movie of "this era", and we seem to be "looking forward" to its arrival. In contrast, "Zhongxie" belongs to the past, and Spielberg in 2018 for the Our spectacle, Ready Player One, is nothing more than a 70s-ish future.
But it's not quite the "we want" version, and if we don't praise it, we'll get caught up in the strategy it crafts.
(1) "Experience" the horror
Audiences await a traditional pattern in 'Kunchiyan' - the classicism of the thriller, a testament to the 'ghost', which may appear in the film's opening 'spiritual video': about two Students who venture into room 402, but as the scene ends, there isn't even a shot of their reaction, or a chaotic movement, instead, the camera leaves the two students and turns to a blurred, noncommittal virtual image, but at this time Still "handheld" and interrupted by a clip, followed by the Horror Times logo, and the host greeting the audience, which "deleted" the last moments of the video. Then, in the news, we could only see results from one news site - the third month of "unaccounted for".
The second time that such a "proof" might constitute such a "proof" was after the psychic ceremony, it was falsified by a panoramic shot of six bird's-eye angles, "how is it, does it look real?" and "100,000 views", it was falsified by Assuming the absolute role of "seeing", "seeing" means "existing", the first falsification comes from "not seeing", and the second is "seeing".
So until the end, especially in the last 20 minutes after being praised, after everyone "no one survived", the audience can finally "sigh in relief" at the empty corridors and bathrooms, instead of "sighing in the cold" Breath", and this cold breath, we don't know how many times we have inhaled it before because of the sudden appearance of the ghost.
So until then, what can we see?
Many viewers' negative evaluation of "Kun" comes from its excessive time compared with ordinary horror films, and they are inadvertently closer to a Bazin-Deleuz line of thinking than praised ones.
In the long "deposition" (or "foreplay") of the film, a lot of time was spent presenting the encounters, self-introductions, greetings, and even the cafes between the members of the Horror Times film crew from the media in the public space. It's a silly, cherry tomato game, and a diving shot in the shape of an official Gopro promo. On the way to the destination Kunchiyan, a fatalistic horror is deconstructed in banter and gameplay.
Through the mode of genre, the audience clearly understands that they can't escape completely (provided they don't explicitly predict the "no one alive" ending), but watching these more mundane trivial moments helplessly, we can be sure that this The horror behind this tragedy.
All of this coincides with Neorealism. Bazin said that Italian Neorealism invented a new type of image: fact-image. From the perspective of "movie", the significance of Neorealism is far more than its The content of social responsibility is not completely equal to the democratic production method of "carrying the camera on the street", but comes from its authenticity. E.g
"What does Zivatini mean when he defines Neorealism as an art of encounters, fragments, moments, fragmented, failed encounters? Rossellini's Partisans or De Sica's "The Bicycle Thief" is such an encounter. In "Umberto D" ("Tears in the Wind"), De Sica constructs a famous passage that Bazin uses as an example: In the morning, the young maid walks away Entering the kitchen, performing a listless series of mechanical actions—cleaning the room, repelling the ants with water, taking out the coffee machine, closing the door with its toes. It glances over its pregnant belly, as if all the misery in the world originates here. The sudden effect of a series of meaningless actions that obey simple perceptual-motor patterns in a mundane or everyday context, a purely visual situation to which the young maid has no response or reaction. , the stomach constitutes some kind of collision..."
——Gille Deleuze, "Time-Image"
Deleuze's response to Bazin's theory of realism - in the purely visual situation of neorealism, we feel the real time flow of the film, don't the audience who blamed "Kunchiyan" feel the same way? ?
Bazin supported all advances in film technology, such as color cinema, or the advent of the wide screen in his day, and if he were still alive, he would have praised the "pseudo-recording" of Kun, where everything tends to the greatest extent possible. near real.
These split-screen, fisheye or anamorphic "Panoramics" are all too familiar to people of "this age", they may have appeared as a style of surreal images before, and now it can appear outside the theater in any place with "images" In space (for now, we have to "endure", or "enjoy" its indiscriminate bombardment in various fields), such as live broadcast rooms, or popular Korean reality TV variety shows, the new realism in the near future will definitely bring film cameras Carry it to live webcasts, social software, or short video sites.
Just like the slogan on its poster, please enjoy the "Horror" of "Experience" and the dark side of daily life.
(2) What is a ghost? Wei Hejun's "Being Seen"
However, "Kunchiam" is only about a person's image: its protagonist is not Ji Hyun, Ah Yeon, Sung Hoon, or Di Yun, who are "live broadcast" on various floors of an abandoned mental hospital, but hiding in the base camp Captain Wei Hejun, who watched them in the middle, was just him, and it could only be a one-man show about him.
For Wei Hejun, the "real" has disappeared, or is gradually shifting on a disappearing progress bar as the viewing volume on the screen reaches 100W.
Of course, the "sense of terror" disappeared, or the adventure of everyone in the mental hospital never happened. When we arrived, we only saw a video of "Haunted House Adventure". The inside and outside of the film became a "pseudo-record". ', which is a paradoxical and unspoken reflex.
In addition, the electronic screen can be thought of as a cage, a cage of symbolic order, ideology, which frames everything - so, those who plan horror quest shows must be pure materialists.
However, Wei Hejun's extraordinary thing is that he framed the "supernatural" incident - by setting up "conspiracy" undercover agents - also known as the "child care" in the proverb, and a certain trick.
So, what are ghosts?
In this "cute" face, Jingbei is exactly the same as everyone's first point of view. She can be a woman who has been "alienated" by plastic surgery and beauty (two industrial products of "our era" are also Gradually eroding reality), when you stare at the huge black hole in his "eye" part, she is also staring at you, staring at Wei Hejun who is "looking".
This "empty" is the abyss of the real, the eternal night, and we can directly call the "ghost" the scientific name: the real thing that breaks into the symbolic order, this "real thing" cannot be symbolized, irreducible, Hence as an anomaly that wanders forever.
Wei Hejun must die, must "self-destruct", just like his sacrifice to the real world, this is just a rehearsal of "self-destruction", when the sense of reality and terror "disappear", it will also have nowhere for revenge Absence, entering by way of anomalies or ghosts, forcing a redefinition of it in an extreme way.
(3) Deadly strategy
"Kunchiyan" clearly tells you where the images you see come from - by facing the mirror directly, and all the characters coincide with the real names of their actors.
Therefore, it is not rough, but rather delicate, and it is impossible to complete a complete reflex, that is, the virtuality of the plot. It's all a movie!
In the end, "Kun" is still based on a more classical production model - the Korean film industry system that once gave birth to "Train to Busan" and "New World". , and always contains social criticism or a sense of social responsibility. When we look at the history of the "Kunchiyan" mental hospital, we should not feel any pioneering or strangeness.
Also as a pseudo-documentary horror film, "Zhongxie" constructs a sense of horror from folklore, performances, and props, while "Kunchiyan" relies on editing and special effects, and through the disorganized moving shots in the front part, the traces of "post-production" are finally removed. cover. This "industrial" system guarantees that it will not and cannot have any technical errors, such as signal interference, ambiguity, and if they do, they must be "errors" that can be mass-produced.
The old-fashioned action-image doesn't disappear, it doesn't retreat, it's just overwhelmed by the long "waiting", "sedimentation", and removing these parts, we can get a standard version of the horror story - it is guided by the "motivation".
And this is a moment in Baudrillard's work, "simulacrum" cannot be distinguished from reality, since "reality" can be produced, a system can speak words that deny it, and what should we say? ?
The above is the final strategy of "Kunchiyan", which tempts us to praise its "truth".
references:
Gilles Deleuze: Time—Image, translated by Xie Qiang and Ma Yue, Changsha, Hunan Fine Arts Publishing House, 1st edition, August 2004
Jean Baudrillard: Criticism of the Political Economy of Symbols, translated by Xia Ying, Nanjing, Nanjing University Press, 1st edition, January 2015
Jean Baudrillard: "Why Everything Has Not Disappeared", translated by Zhang Xiaoming and Xue Faran, Nanjing, Nanjing University Press, 1st edition, April 2017
Slavoj Žižek: The Abyss of Freedom, translated by Wang Jun, Shanghai, Shanghai Translation Publishing House, 1st edition, February 2013
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