Re-write!
The real mystery is whoever thought this was a good idea.
Mystery Writers
Director: Hsieh Chih-wen • Writer: Hsieh Chih-wen, Tan Sys
Starring: Esther Huang, Chen Yuu, Masha Pan, Tai Ping-ya, Tanivu Yatauyungana, Aline Cheng, You Shu-ting
Taiwan • 1hr 24mins
Opens Hong Kong May 16 • IIB
Grade: C-
All you really need to know about writer-director Hsieh Chih-wen’s Mystery Writers | 鬼天廈 is that his first (?) was called Breast and House. That works for me. If you insist on more, know that’s it’s yet another entry into the Real Haunted Taiwanese Places sub-genre that seems to have emerged lately. In itself it’s not an objectionable trend. It’s the backyard cheapie production values and hackneyed, sloppy writing that’s objectionable. And in truth, the “cheap” part isn’t even a going concern. Plenty of backyard cheapies are classics (The Evil Dead, Pontypool, Bad Taste, the first Saw…). This is not those.
Hsieh’s jumping off point is the 1984 Jin Xin Building electrical fire (allegedly) that killed 19 people, for which the building remains almost fully occupied because it’s 1) in central Taipei and rents are 2) cheap as shit. Needless to say, it’s earned a reputation for being haunted. From there, Hsieh concocts an exploitative slab of horror hokum about a bunch of dead sex workers and the shaman daughter of one of them who’s trying to lay the souls to rest. Or something. If this told me anything about anything and weren’t so shoddily made I might feel more generous towards a quick and dirty chiller. It’s not. I don’t.
No idea why they’re smiling
Years after the fire killed her mother Xiao-qing (Esther Huang Jing-yi, Gaga), shaman-exorcist Pei-zhi (Chen Yuu, Till We Meet Again) is living in the same building, investigating (I think) what really happened in addition to seeing the souls to the afterlife. Maybe. Also living in the building is Shao-jun (Masha Pan), a budding mystery-horror writer and general busybody who’s using the odd goings-on around the building as inspiration. He might work there part time as a security guard too, because he introduces himself to Pei-zhi after spying on her via CCTV (!) and then pounding on her door (!!) and demanding she tell him what she was doing (!!!). That’s not how it works, guy. Anyway, he eventually sees Pei-zhi in action when one of the building’s ghosts possesses a neighbour, Yi-ting (Aline Cheng) and she banishes it, as well as when she allows the ghost of a young boy to possess her so that his mother can move on.
The big mystery though is who the ghost terrorising everyone is, and what it wants. Turns out it’s an old co-worker of Xiao-qing’s, her innocent brothel bestie Li-mei (Tanivu Yatauyungana) who was humiliated and tortured by a john and then beaten senseless – on screen – by a dickhead of a pimp the night of the deadly fire. She wants to take revenge on Xiao-qing, who she blames for her death. She’s out for Pei-zhi’s blood.
Mystery Writers gives off big Onpaku energy – and that’s not a good thing – and in doing so it makes slop like The Bridge Curse 2: Ritual look like Ringu or The Wailing by comparison. The film sounds dead, and not in a good way, the VFX (with the exception of a bloody, gooey corpse near the start) are crappy, and the big finale is beyond anticlimactic. Hsieh doesn’t demonstrate much of a gift for visuals either; most of the images are so murky it’s hard to figure out what’s going on. Of course, the scene where Li-mei is brutalised is in full, brightly lit, living colour, and if Hsieh thought he was showing us the horror to better understand her rage, man, well he failed spectacularly. It’s enraging alright. Not just in the way he wanted it to be. Despite being surrounded by a dumpster fire (ha, more fire) Yatauyungana is a bright light. She’s sweet without being saccharine, naïve without being dumb and, probably no thanks to Hsieh, she totally sells the horror of her death; you feel for her. She deserves better than this schlock. Longest 84 minutes ever. — DEK