Red Wedding Dress: Paper Bride
红嫁衣：纸新娘
China, 2025, colour, 2.35:1, 85 mins.
Director: Xu Jun 徐俊.
Rating: 3/10.
Costume horror/ghost movie is even more chaotically written than Red Wedding Dress – made by a similar team but with an unrelated plot and characters.
STORY
Ancient China. One dark and stormy night, in Wuwang forest outside Xiuluo city, two villagers bring a female corpse to bury. The area is reputed to be haunted by ghost-generals that command the five legions of the underworld. Suddenly the female corpse “wakes up” and kills one of the villagers; the other is killed by a ghost-general. Li Feiyun (He Gang) and Ye Wushuang (He Yuchen), officers in the imperial Bureau of Ethical Governance 廉政司, arrive by night at the mansion of a nobleman, in which he and his whole household of 36 are found massacred. Li Feiyun thinks the killings are linked to the nobleman’s wedding that day; Ye Wushuang, who has paranormal abilities, makes herself travel back and witness events, in which she finds a paper bride returned to claim somebody’s life. Some time later, while exhuming a grave under the supervision of township governor Wei (Zhu Jiazhen), Li Feiyun and Ye Wushuang discover a booby-trapped underground tomb containing a fortune in gold, all plundered by the late nobleman from the local people. Realising that his death was the work of professional assassins, they visit Zhen Dongyang (Ren Yongguo) to find out if anyone hired his men recently. He says that someone wanted two teams of 50 men, one to kill some labourers in Wolong mountain and another to kill the first team. The same person – who wore a mask – then wanted more men to take a large wooden crate to Xiuluo city. Li Feiyun and Ye Wushuang rush to Xiuluo city, where the Grand Exorcism Rite 驱傩大典, held every three years, is being performed. They ask nobleman You Da (Chen Bin), who had been asked by the dead nobleman to hide a large wooden crate, where the crate is buried. Inside they find accounts books, which they carefully re-bury; but next night You Da tells them the books have disappeared. Li Feiyun now finds himself haunted by a female ghost that wants to kill him; in fact the “ghost” is You Da’s wife, who then kills You Da. Li Feiyun and Ye Wushuang then learn from Chu Yunhong (Lei Kun), the provincial chief justice in Xiuluo city, that about 10 days ago a paper bride in a red wedding dress stole the souls of all the villagers in Yijiazhuang, near Xiuluo. He considers the paper bride must have returned to claim lives in revenge for something. Li Feiyun and Ye Wushuang ask to inpect the corpses – some of them senior officials – but are then summoned to a dinner by Yu Zhaohai (Zhang Hongbin), the emperor’s brother-in-law, which proves to be a turning point in their investigation.
REVIEW
Though it sounds like a sequel to Red Wedding Dress 红嫁衣 (2025), released five months earlier, Red Wedding Dress: Paper Bride 红嫁衣：纸新娘 is an unconnected ghost movie, despite being made by the same production company, many of the same crew, and also trading on the popular East Asian gaming craze of the past few years centred on the old practice of necrogamy (a “paper bride” being a dead girl found as a partner in the afterlife for an unmarried, dead boy). Directed by Jiangxi-born martial arts/horror specialist Xu Jun 徐俊, 33, who co-directed Red Wedding Dress, it’s again written by him and Liu Mingliang 刘明亮 – and is even more incoherent in its plotting, especially in the final, twist-packed 20 minutes. Unlike Red Wedding Dress, which managed a very decent RMB24 million at the box office, Paper Bride took less than a third (RMB7.7 million), more typical for this kind of online movie-like fare.
Set in some timeless era, with rival states, vague talk of emperors and fanciful imperial departments – the hero and heroine work for the Bureau of Ethical Governance 廉政司, a kind of ancient ICAC – the film starts with the massacre of a nobleman and his household and fans out to include murderous female ghosts in red wedding dresses, corrupt officials and aristocracy, several competing plots (all revealed near the end), and a heroine who’s tempted to make off with a stash of gold that she and her male colleague chance upon. Said heroine is played by Xu regular He Yuchen 何雨宸, 24, a Sichuan-born actress with an impressively glacial stare but whose dramatic skills still remain largely untested by Xu’s scripts. She’s okay here (and partners well with He Gang 贺刚 as her superior) but the film overall is at least a notch down from Red Wedding Dress – and thus her performance too.
The film jumps from setpiece to setpiece with sometimes little connection or characters not being properly introduced. With a different art director and DPs, as well as a slightly larger-looking budget, it has a bigger feel than Red Wedding Dress but is, alas, holed at every opportunity by a screenplay that gives the impression of being made up as the film-makers went along.
CREDITS
Presented by Zhejiang Liangxiaowucai Film (CN).
Script: Liu Mingliang, Xu Jun. Photography: Zhang Rui, Tan Yang. Editing: Chun Fen. Music editing: Li Yang, Chen Bo. Art direction: Wang Wenlong. Styling: Li Jing. Costumes: Tan Jianxin. Sound: Wang Jue. Sound effects: Yang Hongqiang, Su Xiaoli. Action: Shan Lei, Zhang Xiubian. Executive direction: Shan Lei.
Cast: He Yuchen (Ye Wushuang/Yang Xiruo), He Gang (Li Feiyun), Qiu Junlong (Yue Pengyu), Xu Nuo (Jin Yuxiu), Xu Zhe (Yun Zhongyue), Lei Kun (Chu Yunhong, provincial chief justice), Chen Bin (You Da), Chu Yang (Yang Shifan), Ji Wei (Mao Xiangmai), Ren Yongguo (Zhen Dongyang), Song Bo (Ma Jingzhong), Guo Hanyu (Ma Baoguo), Zhu Jiazhen (Wei, township governor), Zhang Hongbin (Yu Zhaohai, emperor’s brother-in-law), Gao Shenyan (Grand Exorcism Rite manager).
Release: China, 31 Oct 2025.