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Rigor Mortis

As someone who's never seen a jiangshi movie before, I thought this movie was full of really tense and mysterious moments. I especially loved the use of smoke, whether from cigarettes or from the ghosts around the building. There were also a lot of similar motifs to the other movies we watched, such as powerful, vengeful ghosts who hurt others because of the injustice they suffered (the twins), spouses who can't let go of their loved ones (Auntie Mui and her husband), and the spirtually attuned masters that end up helping the main character and ghosts in the setting heal (Lau).

everyone said chin siu-ho looks like my dad and i can kind of see it

I also found the setting to be cliche, with many other Asian horror mediums taking place in apartment buildings. The scene where ghosts walk through the narrow hallway especially reminded me of the early seasons of the webcomic Sweet Home, where tenants must work together to fight off infectious monsters. It gave a similar feeling of being trapped in a living space, where your home is simultaneously a place of protection and vulnerability.

i feel bad for pak not only bc he died but bc while watching, for the entire movie, i called him cheese boy because he was covered in like a weirdly orange mud and never stopped..... even though this was the only scene where he looked like that...........

this scene around 38 min actually killed me like i was about to start crying

There are also many clique cinematic choices, such as one of Auntie Mui's last conversations with her jiangshi husband. The camera slowly moves around her as she circles her dead husband, fussing about him and repeating lines of dialogue he's said before. I really loved how this technique was used to show her slowly become more and more distraught, trying to recreate the life he had; it actually got me to tear up!

With that said, there were even more cliques I could mention, but overall I think the movie uses these cliques well. It manages to add some comedy in a otherwise very dark movie, and the main characters have a lot of personality to them. I appreciate that the director was able to pull this off, while still not having the characters tell us every little detail about themselves; rather, it's information given to use via the mise-en-scene of how each apartment looks, what the tenants do/gossip about in their free time, how they treat eachother, and in how much they seem to value their current lifestyles vs. want to move on (whether that's by moving away, or committing suicide like Chin Siu-Ho attempts in the beginnning). Overall this was a great first introduction to jiangshi movies and I'd love to see more after this!

thank you for reading lyjilings