I, With a Headache
Welcome to the dumping ground of January.
Them, Behind the Door
Director: Joe Chien • Writer: Nelson Yan
Starring: Ivy Yin, Tsao Yu-ning, Bai Run-yin, Bai Ling, Stanley Fung
Taiwan • 1hr 51mins
Opens Hong Kong Jan 2 • IIB
Grade: C
Does anyone remember Joe Chien Jen-hao’s bananas creature feature Abyssal Spider? Anyone? Bueller? That was some class-A backyard cheapie junk about a monster on the ocean floor (I think), or at the very least on the ocean, that got lost in the Covid shuffle back in 2020. Cheeseball as that was, there was an element of glee buried in the film that made it an amusing, if rickety, watch. The director of luminous titles such as Zombie Fight Club and The House that Never Dies II (the sequel to Raymond Yip Wai-man’s entry) is back with his Spider co-writer Nelson Yan for Them, Behind the Door | 鬼們之蝴蝶大廈, another haunted building chiller from Taiwan.
And when I say “haunted building chiller” I mean horror-mystery-serial killer thriller-ghost-addiction-outbreak-disaster drama from Taiwan. Chien and Yan don’t skimp on the genres, so by the time the closing frames of the central apartment block reduced to rubble roll around, your neck will be aching from tonal whiplash and narrative about-faces. Check that: Them is tonally consistent in its shadowy, colourless ruin. It’s the source of the characters’ stress that’s all over the map.
This hall is star
Make no mistake: this is the year’s first contender for Worst of ’25 (but nowhere near the hot garbage of Onpaku). But in a year expecting a seventh Jurassic Park movie, the waking nightmare that is the dwarves in Disney’s live action Snow White, and a pile of shameless and pricy Netflix “originals” we’ve yet to hear of it probably won’t make the final cut. And in total fairness, horror hounds will find something to love.
A young woman, Chen Wei (Ivy Yin Xin, A Place Called Silence), moves into apartment 606 in the run-down, super-cheap Butterfly Mansion with her toothless moppet, clearly on the fun from her abusive, gambling addicted partner (Kaiser Chuang Kai-hsun). The mansion’s rents are so cheap because it’s thought to be haunted thanks to its suicide hotspot status. But it’s all she can afford – gee, might she have her own demons? – so she gets the keys from the caretaker, Uncle Liang (Hongkonger Stanley Fung Shui-fan), along with a bunch of warnings about the building and its eerie goings-on. Wei’s neighbours include Shan (Tsai Chen-nan, Marry My Dead Body), who runs a temple (?) on an upper floor, one-eyed Ah Di (Bai Run-yin) – who sees ghosts – and his grandmother (Bai Ling, whose manic presence is always welcome), a battered housewife down the hall, some spirits in the laundry room (one of whom is none other than Josie Ho) and Xiao Liang (Tsao Yu-ning), the friendly handyman (??) who takes over when Uncle Liang takes ill. He takes a liking to Wei and her daughter. Uh oh.
Famously haunted places in Taiwan have been making the rounds the last few years (The Bridge Curse, Mystery Writers), and the trend has seeped into Japan (The Floor Plan) and Hong Kong (Social Distancing, Back Home), so if you’re convinced you’ve seen the Butterfly Mansion somewhere else, you could be right. But the bleak hallways and flickering fluorescent bulbs that have become visual shorthand for unspoken trauma and societal discord aren’t what make eyes roll here. It’s the unfocused storytelling and left field plot turns that muddy every potential stream. It’s not enough for a haunted character to be haunted; they need to be a serial killer. Wei’s boyfriend can’t just have a gambling problem; they both need to have addiction issues. Them, Behind the Door can’t just recall creepier J-horror; it needs a water tower too. If you don’t believe it takes place in Taiwan – here, have an earthquake. How about a virus outbreak? What are those ghosts doing in the basement? It’s too much and not enough, even if Chien does show some panache – as much as it’s in keeping with Taiwanese real estate horror. He clearly digs the genre and its fucked up elevators. He just needs to figure out when to strip his scripts for parts.