Ghost buster bureaucracy
Despite the fact that horror fictions have existed in China for thousands of years, horror movies have long been a confined theme in the Chinese mainland.
Director Zhao told the Global Times that, according to regulations issued by the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television, a movie may not advocate the existence of ghosts.
The current online information states that belief in superstition is not encouraged. Therefore, when mainland filmmakers want to create a horror story, they have to come up with a reasonable explanation for all the super natural things that happen in a movie.
As a result, according to Zhao, mainland horror movies always end with one of three explanations: people were disguised as ghosts; someone has been made to believe in the paranormal; or the ghosts were someone's fantasy.
Or in the case of movie franchise Painted Skin (2008 and 2012), which is a ghost story based on Qing Dynasty novelist Pu Songling's Bizarre Stories of Liaozhai, the female ghost was changed into a fox demon.
"But people often feel frightened about unknown things or things that cannot be explained. When all the super natural happenings can be explained with a reason, audiences will feel cheated," Zhao said, adding that it is one major reason today's mainland horror movies receive poor feedback.
However, Zhao still feels that authorities' tolerance for content in horror movies is getting looser. As long as the movie ends with materialism and atheism, it is comparatively free to set up various horrifying plots.
"What I can do at the moment is to make the first 90 percent [of the film] as tense as possible," Zhao said.
Another problem for mainland horror movies these years, according to Zhao, is that because the audience base is small, the box-office return for a horror movie is very limited. Hence, few investors have interest in them.
"A horror movie budget is usually around one to two million yuan ($163,000 per 1 million yuan)," Zhao noted, which makes it difficult to produce works of high quality.
Horrifying objects
Certain objects share significance in horror movies of both East and West. For instance, long passages, winding stairways, mirrors, and box-type lifts are all used to generate a psychological response.
A long passage can often catch the audience's attention, especially if it extends to the point that one cannot see the end. When the audience, led by a character in the movie, turns to a new direction on a stairway, it's easy to be frightened when something suddenly comes into view.
Widely used in daily life, mirrors are essential to almost everyone. But sometimes, when we stare at the image reflected from the mirror, it seems there is another world on the other side. In the Chinese concept, while the world human beings live in represents yang, the opposite side then implies yin, where the dead belong.
Mirrors are also seen as a reflection of the past. In the Hollywood movie Mirrors (2008) an old mirror witnessed a deadly fire that took many lives. Since the tragedy, it was cursed by the dead. When a man discovers it by chance, he becomes controlled by the evil inside.
Box type lifts are often used in horror movies, as well. Because people will often feel tense when staying in a small place for a long time, and lifts provide just the right function. Besides, as the surfaces of lifts can reflect images, they can also serve as mirrors.
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