What an effective ad campaign. I’m totally intrigued by this flick. Has anyone seen it? Does it live up to the hype?
If you saw it, did it have subtitles in English? i can’t seem to find a theater that is playing it with subtitles. Odd.
A mate of mine saw it and gave it a so-so rating but liked it as it’s filmed in Taipei and he recognised his MRT station! Whatever. I agree that the ad campaign has been extremely effective (everyone’s talking about it) but i did find the images a bit disturbing!
i saw it last weekend. thought it was ok, but was somewhat dissapointed. the traler shows pretty much all the exciting scenes in the movie. it gets slow at times. the few cool scenes are more disturbing than scary. and there are certain really cheesy scenes and lines that really should have been taken out of the movie.
the cool part is that it’s filmed in taipei and has the look of a high quality hollywood film. i don’t regret having paid to see it, but i would still only rate it so-so.
they switch between taiwanese and mandarin a lot and they do have subtitles in mandarin and english.
I saw it and liked it - sort of. If I hadn’t already been living in Taiwan, I would be convinced that it portrays Taipei acurately. However, there are no fluorescent lights in the movie, everything has indirect lighting, even the hospitals and police stations, which creates a good mood, but is totally unrealistic. Also, there is a martial arts scene where even the women are incredibly skilled and kill a team of cops. Yeah, right. In the comic books, maybe. Also, no scooters.
Despite this and some story discrepancies, I still liked it. I guess I’m just hoping for a rebirth of the local movie industry.
I just saw it last night and thought it was a pretty good film. True I was a little influenced by the fact that it was shot in Taipei and I’m living here. I didn’t think it was all that frightening and agree that the cool scenes were more disturbing than friendly.
The end of the film has a sort of mystical dream sequence that I thought was handled pretty well and tied the film up well.
True enough, there weren’t many scooters shown, but there were a few. And the absence of flourescent life…sure. Those are all accurate knocks on how the film didn’t ACCURATELY represent Taipei…but how many films about a fanatical Taoist organization trying to attain immortality for one of its members also serves as an accurate documentary to the city it is filmed in?
And if you really want to knock it on these sorts of grounds I’d knock the scene in the Airport where they totally fail/succeed in showing the airport off to look fairly more modern than it has appeared to me on several trips through.
What is the Chinese name of this movie? I would like to see if I can find it on VCD in China.
Surely the best reason to see this movie is to see the gorgeous (and homegrown!) Rene Liu in action.
Does she take any of her clothes off?
She did some nice pics for FHM a couple of years ago…
The effective advertising campaign drew me in and I watched the movie today, but I was disappointed in the way that it portrayed Taiwan, and Taipei. After watching it I immediately thought that the representation of Fanatical Taoists would give foreigners the wrong idea - that Taoists in Taiwan believed in the evil spirit, something that most Taoists would disapprove of. Taiwan’s biggest belief is Buddhism, and we see that different beliefs can coexist peacefully here. I was irritated at one stage after the results of the postmortem came in, which said that Taiwanese technology could not identify the lethal bacteria and it would have to be sent to the USA. The police uniforms looked poor in comparison to real police uniforms. The actors spoke poor Mandarin with a terrible Taiwanese accent - even though the majority of Taiwanese speak the language perfectly and with no accent. This is also unrepresentative of Taiwan.
In general I feel that the movie portrayed Taiwanese culture in a poor manner and would give others the wrong impression about the country.
As far as I know, almost ALL Taiwanese are fervent believers in evil spirits. And any god will be worshipped if there is some sort of advantage that can be brought to the worshipper, whether it’s a fertile womb, a stellar test score, or a winning lottery ticket.
Most of the so-called Buddhists in Taiwan that I meet know jack about Buddhism. Anyway, I didn’t see any inter-faith strife in the movie.
I thought that was pretty realistic. I had lab tests done on my now deceased dog’s tumour at Taida Animal Hospital, and they recommended that I send a sample to the States, because the technology there was superior.
I think you and I live in different Taiwans. I thought the actors’ Mandarin was a little too standard. You think the majority of Taiwanese speak Mandarin perfectly and with no accent? Any word with a retroflex tends to get butchered here. Listen to how “water” is pronounced anywhere you go. Listen to Li Yingyuan or Chen Shuibian speak. Their Mandarin is atrocious.
A poor manner? Not really. Inaccurate? Yeah, they showed too many new buildings, and not enough bathroom-tiled eyesores. 
I would like to vote for Jennifer88 as “funniest poster”
Jennifer88 wrote:
The police uniforms looked poor in comparison to real police uniforms.
Ever been hauled in by the foreign affairs cops? I have and while it was during a winter month and none of them were perspiring so much, it didn't seem that the foreign affairs cops actually had uniforms that they regularly wore. And the office was actually almost a dead ringer from my experience!!!
How am I still here?
Barton
Based on what was posted near the top, I went yesterday to see the movie. And I’ve got to say that I disagree with Jenifer 88’s post. In fact, I thought that the movie portrayed Taipei accurately in some ways and better than it really is in other ways.
I totally disagree about the Chinese spoken in the movie. It sounded like typical Taiwanese mandarin to me. I’m not knocking Guoyu but it’s a dialect and I think we need to understand that. It’s not the standard and the movie acurately reflected what is spoken here. Jennifer, maybe you’re hanging around with waishenren. 
There have been many people that have come to Taiwan and claimed to have magical powers and fooled a lot of people. So that superstitious part was accurate as well IMO.
The main inaccuaracy was that every building looked new/good. But that makes Taipei look better internationally. No problem. Hey, it’s a movie.
I didn’t like the posters when I first saw them (I thought it looked like some spooky horror thing), but now, you’ve made me courious. I want to go and see it, too! Anybody else? I’m soooooooo tired of going to the movies on my own.
Iris
I saw it and almost fell asleep. I’m not a big fan of scary movies, so was a little aprehensive, but it turned out to be far less threatening than the baby on the bus suggests. I found it quite entertaining.
I thought the script was shit, but fair enough. But yeah, Jennifer, what are you talking about? Mandarin was poor? Maybe the FBI agent’s Mandarin was poor. All 5 words of it.
Did anyone else find that the film made a point of promoting cultural acceptance? I really thought it was a resounding theme right throughout the film…
Nice character shielding too. 
[quote=“Iris”]I didn’t like the posters when I first saw them (I thought it looked like some spooky horror thing), but now, you’ve made me courious. I want to go and see it, too! Anybody else? I’m soooooooo tired of going to the movies on my own.
Iris[/quote]
Off Topic:
Maybe there should be a segue movie day. Like when a new movie is released (big name ones). Somethin’ me and me pals always did back home. I was going to suggest it for Red Dragon, but never did.
On Topic:
I only saw the previews and thought it looked cool. From what I’ve heard so far I’m still interested in paying to see it.
I wattch this movie last week. Everything seems goods as in a movie.
I personally dislike the inconsitency in subtitling, sometimes in chinese, some times in english+chinese. I like HK movies subtitling, chinese+english.
first I thought it was an armageddon-like movie, but later find out that some one wants to be a god., which is quite interesting. I only watch very old chinese movies that some good benovolent people has finally became god, which they still pay hio-respect at the temple these days.
The ending is quite interesting, which brings you back to reality that this is just a movie, and the director can play with it as he wants. It end with the the male actor, I don’t know his name, resurrect form death as her little girl who has not spoken since the accident whatsoevere call his name. And from the taoist text puzzle, read out 有愛不死. (you3 ai4 bu4 si3) when love is, die not.
cheers
ax
Oh no, you just ruined the ending for some people, Antonxie!
Not me though–I’m the one who reads the end of the book and goes back to the beginning to finish it.
Can’t wait to see this one–looks interesting.
J.
I’m sorry…may be I should keep my keyboard shut …
i see now how good intention ends up:)
regards
ax
I saw the movie last night with a Taiwanese friend. I quite liked it, but maybe that was because I’d sneaked in a pack of “Tim Tams” (Australia’s best snack) and got to munch on those during the scarey scenes.
Personally, I understand the criticisms that have been posted thus far, but I still enjoyed the movie (as did my friend). Although there could have been a little more character and script development, it was still quite entertaining.
It’s interesting that someone commented on the film giving a negative image of Taiwanese culture. I agree with a previous poster that the film portrayed Taipei as being way too clean, with not enough grotty buildings, superbright flouro lights, or thousands of noisy motorbikes - which made it somewhat unrealistic. But, it DID have the “binlang xishi” (betelnut beauty) and a couple of “xiongdi” (gangsters). So, if the director had added the extra reality, then what image would that have really portrayed of Taiwanese culture?
Oh, Antonxie, for the benefit of those who haven’t seen the movie, do you think you could edit your post?
Cheers,
The Big Babou.