Rigor Mortis (film)
Rigor Mortis is a 2013 Hong Kong horror film directed by Juno Mak, and also produced by Takashi Shimizu. The film is a tribute to the Mr. Vampire film series. Many of the former cast are featured in this film: Chin Siu-ho, Anthony Chan, Billy Lau and Richard Ng. Additionally, Chung Fat, who starred in Encounters of the Spooky Kind, is also featured.[2]
| Rigor Mortis | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Traditional | 殭屍 |
| Simplified | 僵尸 |
| Mandarin | Jiāng shī |
| Cantonese | Goeng1 Si1 |
| Directed by | Juno Mak |
| Produced by | Takashi Shimizu Juno Mak Executive Producers: Steven Lo Bernard Lai |
| Written by | Philip Yung Jill Leung Juno Mak |
| Starring | Chin Siu-ho Anthony Chan Kara Hui Lo Hoi-pang Paw Hee-ching |
| Music by | Nath Connelly |
| Edited by | David Richardson |
Production company | Great Sound Creation for Kudos Film |
| Distributed by | Fortissimo Films |
Release date |
|
Running time | 101 minutes |
| Country | Hong Kong |
| Language | Cantonese |
| Budget | HK$15,000,000 |
| Box office | HK$16,781,408[1] |
Plot
Actor Chin Siu-ho, former star of Mr. Vampire, is depressed and suicidal after his wife and young son leave him. He moves into a dilapidated apartment building where he plans to kill himself. There he meets Uncle Yin, the building's friendly supervisor, who performs a welcoming ceremony to ward off malevolent spirits. After re-listening to an old voicemail message from his son, Chin hangs himself. As he struggles in the noose, he draws the attention of twin girl ghosts who haunt the apartment, and they possess his body. Yau, a retired vampire hunter, bursts into the room, cuts down the noose, and forces the spirits to flee Chin's body.
Later, Chin visits Yau's restaurant to thank him for saving his life. As they talk, Yau explains that he comes from a line of jiangshi-hunters, but he has grown weary and has chosen to take up cooking.
The film shifts perspective to seamstress Auntie Meiyi and her husband Uncle Tung, who also live in the apartment building. One night Tung falls down the building's stairwells and dies. Meiyi turns to Gau, a black magician who also lives in the building, and asks him to resurrect her husband. Gau performs a ritual on Tung's disfigured corpse and informs Meiyi it will take Tung several days to revive. Gau puts a mask on Tung's corpse and emphasizes that Meiyi must not remove it.
Meanwhile, Chin meets Yang Feng, a traumatized woman, and her son, Pak. Chin learns that Yang and Pak previously lived in the apartment he now occupies, and that the twin ghosts who haunt the apartment were originally students being tutored there by Yang's husband. One day the husband assaulted and raped one of the twins. The other twin walked in on the terrible scene and stabbed him to death, although she too received mortal wounds in the scuffle. The remaining twin, distraught, then hung herself from the fan. These ghosts are the reason that Yang fled the apartment. Chin resolves to rid the apartment of the twin ghosts so that Yang and Pak can move back in.
Chin asks Yau for help banishing the ghosts, but Yau refuses, saying he is just a simple cook now. Gau assists Chin by summoning the twins, who possess Chin again and use his body to attack Gau. Yau rushes in to join the fray, and together, Gau and Yau exorcise the ghosts from Chin, binding them in a cabinet. Yau rebukes Gau using Chin as bait for the twins and instructs him to burn the cabinet. Gau promises to do so, but he instead secretly stores the cabinet elsewhere.
Meiyi, meanwhile, has grown frustrated that her husband Tung has still not resurrected, and she demands more help from Gau. He admits that the blood of a virgin might speed the resurrection process and reiterates that she must not remove Tung's mask. As Gau and Meiyi discuss their options, Uncle Yin arrives to investigate Tung's disappearance. Afraid that Yin will learn the truth, Meiyi murders him. Later, young Pak visits Meiyi alone. Meiyi hesitates only briefly before locking the virginal Pak in the bathroom with Tung's monstrous corpse. Against Gau's instructions, Meiyi has removed the warding mask from Tung's face. Tung revives and horrifically murders the child as Meiyi stands on the other side of the door, tears streaming down her face.
Yau senses the presence of a powerful evil. He rushes to Gau's apartment and finds a mortally wounded Gau, savaged by the revived Tung. Gau confesses that Tung has risen as a jiangshi and now haunts the apartment complex. Moreover, Gau was responsible for Tung's original death, having thrown him over the rails after his initial fall down the stairs. Gau explains that he is terminally ill with lung cancer, and he intended to bind the twin ghosts in Tung's soulless body to gain power and extend his own life. By removing Tung's mask, Meiyi has let the jiangshi run amok. Yau alerts Chin to what is happening, and Chin rushes off to find Yang.
Yang, searching the building for her missing son Pak, opens the cabinet containing the ghost twins, and, invisible, they escape. Yang finally finds Pak, who to her dismay is a ghost. Filled with rage, she tracks down the jiangshi and attempts to destroy it with a makeshift weapon, but ultimately Tung kills her. Moments later, Chin arrives and sets the jiangshi aflame with a Molotov cocktail, seemingly defeating it. However, the twin ghosts appear and eagerly possess Tung's corpse. Revived, the powerful ghost-infused Tung easily impales Chin through the stomach and leaves him for dead.
Chin, terribly injured, finds Yau, who is preparing to battle the jiangshi. Chin insists that he help Yau, even though Yau warns him he will die. Using his father's vampire hunting tools, Yau sets a trap that temporarily binds Tung to that location, allowing Chin to fight him. Yau, at the cost of an arm, uses the vampire hunting tools to weaken Tung, and Chin finally destroy the jiangshi. As Tung crumbles to ash, Meiyi joins him in death by slitting her throat. Chin and Yau both collapse.
In the final sequence, the audience learns that Chin has actually committed suicide, and that the events the film chronicles are all creations of Chin's dying mind in the process leading to rigor mortis. In reality, the apartment complex is less run-down and the film's characters are people Chin passed on the way to his apartment: Yin is a guard asleep on duty, Yang and Pak are friendly neighbors, and Meiyi is a widow Chin sees admiring a picture of Tung. In his apartment Chin hangs and kills himself, with Yau rushing in too late to save him. At the morgue, Chin's adult son (not a child as Chin's imagination depicted) identifies the body for the medical examiner, Dr. Gau.
Cast
- Chin Siu-ho as Chin Siu-ho
- Anthony Chan as Yau
- Kara Wai as Yang Feng
- Chung Fat as warlock Gau
- Lo Hoi-pang as janitor Uncle Yin, or Grandpa
- Richard Ng as Uncle Tung
- Paw Hee-ching as Auntie Meiyi
- Morris Ho as Pak
- Billy Lau as the cook
Release
Rigor Mortis premiered at the Venice Film Festival.[2]
Reception
Rotten Tomatoes, a review aggregator, reports that 58% of twelve surveyed critics gave the film a positive review; the average rating was 6.1/10.[3] Metacritic rated it 53/100 based on eight reviews.[4] Clarence Tsui of The Hollywood Reporter called it "a lavish, heavy-handed retreading and reinvention of Hong Kong and Japanese horror-film tropes, saved from clinical inhumanity by its veteran cast."[2] Justin Chang of Variety described it as a "flashy, incoherent and virtually scare-free Hong Kong horror exercise".[5] Daniel M. Gold of The New York Times called it a "relentlessly creepy film" that uses less comedy than Mr. Vampire.[6] Martin Tsai of the Los Angeles Times wrote, "The film supplies a succession of hyper-stylized and potent set pieces without ever establishing any sort of internal logic."[7]
References
- 18 November 2013 – 24 November 2013 (in Chinese). Archived from the original on 3 December 2013. Retrieved 10 April 2014.
- Tsui, Clarence (30 September 2013). "Rigor Mortis (Geung Si): Film Review". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved 11 December 2013.
- "Rigor Mortis (2014)". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved 16 September 2014.
- "Rigor Mortis". Metacritic. Retrieved 16 September 2014.
- Chang, Justin (4 June 2014). "Film Review: 'Rigor Mortis'". Variety. Retrieved 16 September 2014.
- Gold, Daniel M. (5 June 2014). "Bringing Blood to the Neighborhood". The New York Times. Retrieved 16 September 2014.
- Tsai, Martin (5 June 2014). "Juno Mak's 'Rigor Mortis' a disorienting Hong Kong horror flick". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 16 September 2014.
