Movie: Rigor Mortis 《僵尸》 2013

I know it is a little late to do a review for this movie now since it was released in the theaters last November but I only got round to watching it a few days ago.

The film began with Auntie Mui (鲍起静) lying in a pool of blood and the camera pans to the injured Yau (陈友) leaning against a crumbling wall.

Nearby, the dying Chin (钱小豪) flips to his back weakly, stares into the sky and his flashback begins.

Chin - the protagonist of the movie - plays himself, a has-been movie actor moving into a very old apartment apparently to end his life.

As he reminisce life with his wife and son in better times, he listens to voicemails left by his young son for the last time. There is no mention what happened to his family but in his flashback, both his wife and son's eyes rolled back and turned white.

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.While hanging off from the ceiling fan, supernatural forces in the house manifests itself to take over his life but Chin was saved in the nick of time by Yau, the descendant of a vampire catcher turned food stall owner.

After his failed suicide attempt, Chin got to know his neighbors better: Auntie Mui, a helpful seamstress; Siu Pak, a white-haired boy who runs along the corridor and Fung (惠英红), a mysterious woman who eats offerings for the dead left outside resident's doors.

When Auntie Mui's husband, Uncle Tung (吴耀汉) dies in a freak accident, she seeks the help of Uncle Gau (鍾发), a medium, to bring her companion back to life...

Rigor Mortis is a somewhat sombre and dark movie that could be hard to swallow. There are certain parts which left me gaping as it does not make any sense logically.

In the scene when Chin first arrives at the residential building, he enters a lift which looked strangely like a service lift. How would an aged public housing have such a spacious lift?

In another scene, when the vampire pushes Fung through the wall, why did she end up at the basement at the top of an escalator? Same reasoning as above, why is there an escalator at the basement of a aged residential building?

To add on, when the vampire kills someone, there is blood splattered everywhere on the walls, window, furniture and floor. How could there be so much blood from a single victim?

Don't the vampire suck blood? And... this vampire does not hop or jump like normal vampires do; it glides its way around.

In fact, this vampire is so un-vampirish he reminded me more of Lord Voldemort instead.

As if that is not mind boggling enough, the ending adds on to my confusion even further.

In the last scene, we are brought back to the very first scene where Yau and Chin lay injured on the ground after defeating the vampire.

Auntie Mui appears from the darkness in sadness and slit her own throat with a broken glass. As she collapsed, we were brought back in a flashback through Chin's eyes to the first day when he moved into his apartment:

The caretaker, Uncle Yin (卢海鹏) was napping in his office; Fung and Siu Pak were in the lift with Chin except Fung who was deranged isn't deranged anymore and is on her way home to cook Sweet & Sour Ribs.

As he make his way towards his apartment, he passed by Auntie Mui's house who appeared to be a widow (Uncle Tung's black and white photo was on the altar).

The next scene shows the already lifeless Chin hanging from the ceiling fan in his apartment with Yau rushing in calling the neighbors for help. The scene is then moved to the morgue where a tag with Chin's name is attached to a corpse' toe.

The coroner in the morgue turns out to be Uncle Gau and someone claiming to be Chin's son turns up to claim his body...

I am lost.

So, when Yau first discovered Chin hanging at the beginning of the movie, Chin did not survive at all? The subsequent happenings were just part of his imagination before he breathed his last?

Is that it?

Anyway, the unit number of Chin's apartment is 2442. Sounds pretty much like "Easy to die, Dying is easy" in Cantonese.

Although I cannot make sense of what the movie is all about, I am still delighted to see some veteran Hong Kong actors/actresses in this film especially Chin Siu Hou, Chan Yau, Chung Fatt and Lau Nam Kwong (樓南光) who were in the earlier 1980s Mr Vampire series.


*This movie was dedicated to Lam Ching Ying and Ricky Hui in the end credits.

鬼新娘

作曲: 聂安达
作词: 郑国江
主唱: 杰儿合唱团

天际朗月也不愿看
天际朗月也不愿看

明月吐光，阴风吹柳巷
是女鬼觅爱郎
谁人愿爱，凄厉鬼新娘
陪伴女鬼，深宵偷拜月光

*明月吐光，冤鬼风里荡
夜更深雾更寒
游魂踏遍，幽静路上
寻觅替身，阴风吹冷月光

她的眼光，她的眼光
好似好似星星发光
睇见，睇见，睇见，睇见，心慌慌

她的眼光，她的眼光
好似好似星星发光
睇见，睇见，睇见，心更慌

天际朗月也不愿看
天际朗月也不愿看
天际朗月也不愿看

Wong Siu Fung and Chin Siu Hou in a scene from Mr. Vampire

I, in particularly liked the opening song which actually appears in the very first Mr. Vampire movie (1985) when the ghost bride played by Wong Siu Fung (王小凤) fell in love with Chin Siu Hou's (钱小豪) character.