Rigor Mortis  殭屍  (Geung Si) 2013

Directed  Juno Mak Zeon-lung
Produced  Juno Mak, Shimizu Takashi ( 'Ju-on: The Grudge')
Cinematography Ng Man-ching (as Ng Kai-ming)
Starring  Chin Siu-ho, Anthony Chan Yau, Kara Hui, Billy Lau, Nina Paw Hee-ching, Chung Fat, Lo Hoi-pang, Richard Ng


Hi, people! After a bout with a totally un-funny dental nerve infection, I'm back on my feet with some of the hard stuff  (There will be spoilers ahead.)

There is not a great tradition of horror movies in Hong Kong and Chinese cinema.  Like almost any genre in chinese and Hk film the sources of the 'horror' genre are grounded in chinese opera, historic novels and story compilations, the zhiguai xiaoshuo ( 志怪小说) Tales of the Miraculous going back to the Song and even Han Dynasties, with Pu Songling's liaozhai zhiyi (聊齋誌異 Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio 1740) being one of the chief inspirations for the film makers in the second half of the 20th century. Stories of beautiful ghost girls seducing unwary young scholars, fox-spirits and vengeful ghosts comprising the bulk of the topics for supernatural films well into the '90s. In Pu Song Ling we find also early horror stories about Geung Si. One of the earliest examples of the genre is ' Midnight Vampire' (午夜殭屍 Ng Je Geung Si) by Yeung Kung-leung from 1936. It is the earliest movie to feature geung si, the famous 'hopping vampires' of Hk cinema, also the first to mix  horror with martial arts.
The term geung si 殭屍, ( jiangshi in Mandarin) translates as nothing more than 'stiff corpse'. A geung si in popular mythology is nothing more than a resurrected corpse. He doesn't suck blood, he steals the qi of the living, the life energy. Being unable to walk properly, perhaps because of being a stiff corpse, he is forced to hop on both legs as a means for locomotion. He is almost always dressed in the robes of a Qing Dynasty official and he knows kung fu. So, if you see someone with a pale complexion who matches this description, better start checking your pockets for glutinous rice!  A geung si can be made by various causes, a black cat walking over your grave, not observing proper burial rites, a purpose unfulfilled or a debt owed by you or to you, a grudge, or you can be reanimated by a daoist priest or monk, to bring you back to your home to be properly buried if you died abroad, a practice known as ganshi 趕屍, 'corpse driving'. If your relatives were too poor to hire a vehicle to transport you, they would pay  a Daoist monk or priest, a 'Fat Si', to resurrect you (and a few others, to make it feasible) and teach you to hop your way home to a proper burial.

In the mid-80s to mid-90s, geung si movies in the form of horror comedy with martial arts became extremely popular in Hong Kong. Among them of course Ricky Hui's Mr Vampire series, to which Rigor Mortis is something of an epilogue, a final chapter. ('Mr Vampire' 僵屍先生 , Geung Si Sin Sang 1985)
The constellation would be always similar, a daoist priest or exorcist ('fat mou si'), usually with a unibrow and more often than not played by Lam Ching-ying, battling one or several geung si as well as the bumbling incompetence of one or several apprentices. The weaponry being glutinous rice, paper amulets, mirrors, chicken-blood imbued twine, ba gua and superior kung fu.

Billy Lau, Lam Ching-ying and Chin Siu-ho in 'Mr Vampire'

In actor, singer and designer Juno Mak's directorial debut Rigor Mortis we have moved on, we've jumped 30 years. The master is gone and the erstwhile assistant Yau (Anthony Chan Yau) is trying to hold together a community of mostly elderly people who live in the tenement house where washed out actor Chin Siu-ho (himself), the other assistant from the old movies, is just moving into the most haunted apartment in the history of apartment buildings. The irony being, that Yau is not an exorcist any longer, he's a cook because 'there aren't any vampires left', and the other, Chin, is an actor who just played the vampire hunter in his movies. Several years in the past the apartment in question, No. 2442, had been the location of a terrible tragedy where two teenage girls, twins, killed their rapist tutor and committed suicide, now haunting the apartment as vengeful spirits. Chin Siu-ho, estranged from his wife and son, has really only rented the place to end his life. He tries to kill himself and is possessed by the twins, who are a far cry from the nice Hk cinema ghost girls of yore. They are japanese style ghosts who would make Yamamura Sadako ('Ring' リング Ringu, 1998) , she of TV crawling fame, run away screaming. Exorcist Yau who can see spirits, saves Chin, driving the twins from his body, inadvertently thwarting resident daoist priest Gau's (Chung Fat) devious plan to harvest their power for himself. Gau is the third iteration of the daoist we meet, the mirror image of  Yau, treading a dark and dubious path. He has lung cancer and his time is over, in fact, as we learn further on, the soul collectors, hell's bounty hunters are on his trail, searching for him in the corridors of the building every night. The only way to not let them find him is to smoke the ashes of unborn children in his cigarettes. He wants to live on and turns to necromancy and murder... The chain of events being set in motion by this will result in despair and bloody death for almost everyone involved.  Here Rigor Mortis and the classic geung si movies it pays hommage to take radically different directions. In the old movies nobody of consequence ever dies. Here the killing and the dying is only starting. And even when the classic arsenal is brought out and at the end the Geung Si is taken down in a combined effort of both ritual and fisticuffs, almost anyone is either dead or dying, there's no return to the way things were before, and it's not really over....

Resident exorcist Anthony Chan Yau

The most remarkable thing about this dark
and dreary film is its ensemble cast. There are so many renowned old actors of classic Hong Kong film fame in it that watching makes for a distinctively nostalgic experience.  Anthony Chan Yau (drummer of the popular rock band The Wynners), who plays the whole movie in a bathrobe and his underwear and manages to command as much respect as if he were wearing ceremonial garb. The wonderful Kara Hui as traumatised, homeless Mrs Yeung Feng, the former resident of apartment 2442, who gets to relive a semblance of family life with Chin Siu-ho and her son. Nicely grumpy Richard Ng as Uncle Tung, who gets turned into a geung si, the awesome Nina Paw Hee-ching (older sister of cinematographer Peter Pao), whose depiction of sweet Auntie Mui is the darkest of the movie and elevates Rigor Mortis miles above the average horror flick.

Nina Paw Hee-ching  and Richard Ng

The film is circular, it starts with a cold open after the final confrontation is already over, only it doesn't seem like a victory at all. The heroes are all but defeated and barely alive in the midst of the smoking ruins. The scene plays out against the beautiful tune from the Mr Vampire movies Gwai San Noeng (Ghost Bride), only this version is hauntingly sad compared to the original. This melancholy can be felt all the way through the movie. We are watching the end of something, this is a swan song.

There is astonishing camerawork and lighting and colour direction in here. Director of Cinematography Ng Man-ching whose work we know from Infernal Affairs, SPL, or Tsui Hark's Time and Tide does a tremendous job here. The atmosphere is created by completely desaturated colours leaving the movie in a greyish, greenish tint which looks and feels a bit sick, the only bright colouring is of course the red of blood... It's all indoor photography, no outsides, all claustrophobic, slowly creeping, panning camera moves creating a sense of dread, often it seems like the camera is searching for something that is lost.
In one scene the camera pans slowly over some debris on the floor and catches a black and white group photo of Lam Ching-ying, Ricky Hui, Yuen Wah, Billy Lau, Moon Lee from Mr Vampire, like a reminder of happier days gone forever. In the here and now of the film there are only wounded people, hurt, or old, forgotten. They have seen better days  or have fallen on hard times like Chin Siu-ho the actor, or have been left behind when the world changed, like the exorcist Yau (Anthony Chan Yau) who doesn't even care to dress properly anymore, or like Mrs Yeung Feng the former resident of Chin's apartment who roams the halls  of the building in her nightgown living off the sacrificial food the tenants put out for the ancestors.

 Don't mess with Mrs K.!   Kara Hui 

Deep down it is a story about rape. The twins are raped and abused. Chin Siu-ho is raped by the twins  by having his body possessed, Uncle Tung's body is abused, denied death and burial by the exorcist slash necromancer Gau who claims to help Auntie Mui. These rape crimes serve as proof that evil always begets more and greater evil. The twins kill their abuser and commit suicide, turning into vengeful spirits. Chin's life, dented as it already is, does experience a few moments of 'happiness', only to lose everything all over again. And while loveable, grumpy Uncle Tung turns into a being of pure evil, poor Auntie turns into a ruthless murderer...

Showdown for Chin Siu-ho 

It's a film about loss and the desperate effort to get back what was lost. Chin Siu-ho's loss of his family, Yeung Feng's loss of her husband, her home and the life she knew, both of which are granted a bit of happiness together, almost being a family again if only for a moment. Auntie Mui  losing her husband and desparately trying to get him back, no matter what the cost. Necromancer Gau's attempt to escape judgment and bring back lost time and spent health.
Even deeper down the film can be read as a statement on Hong Kong, a Hong Kong that does not exist any longer, where the rules are different and the people are simply going through the motions of existing, haunted by the spirits of the past,  mourning a life that's not there anymore while around them this nightmarish tenement building is all there is...

All in all an immensely creepy, brilliant, visually overwhelming yet very sad, even at times depressing movie with a somber message and some graphic violence.
And I didn't even spoil the final devastating twist....
Watch it. If you dare.