Mortal Ouija
碟仙
China, 2019, colour, 2.35:1, 82 mins.
Director: Lian Tao 廉涛.
Rating: 6/10.
A strong cast led by actress Huang Yi, plus meticulous direction, brings a fresh feel to a familiar genre.
STORY
Beijing, the present day. A distressed middle-aged woman (Liu Chenxia) explains that, seven days after playing with the ouija board, you die, just like her daughter; at the time there was a strange smell in their flat and a cat also died. Later, a young woman (Ma Juanjuan) in the same flat is spooked out by something but finds it’s only a cat in the storage room. Some time later, single mother Le Mengyao (Huang Yi) and her young daughter Le Wenwen (Cheng Xiaoxia) move into the same flat in an oldstyle building; the price was cheap. While moving in, Le Wenwen looks for a doll in the storage room at the end of the corridor and finds an old ouija board. That night Le Wenwen sleepwalks, and Le Mengyao finds her playing with the board, asking when her mother and father will live together again as she misses the latter. 8 Dec, 1st Day. In the morning Le Wenwen finds all her tropical fish have died. Le Mengyao hears her daughter’s voice on the babycom when she’s actually playing outside, and there’s strange smell (like a dead body) in the flat. 9 Dec, 2nd Day. An old woman (Wu Tiehuan) who lives downstairs tells Le Mengyao that someone died in the flat six months ago and since then only a group of young people have briefly lived there. Le Mengyao discovers a man (Lu Jiahao) had raped his step-daughter (He Jiaying) and, when she became pregnant, she’d hung herself; afterwards the step-father had disappeared. Le Mengyao tells the story to her close friend Xiaomin (Zeng Yunzhen), who later imagines she sees a female ghost in the storage room. 10 Dec, 3rd Day. Le Mengyao becomes angry when she sees Xiang Tian (Fan Yichen), Le Wenwen’s biological father, meeting the child at the gates of the kindergarten. She forbids him to see his daughter, though Le Wenwen encourages him. That night Le Wenwen sleepwalks again and Le Mengyao is shocked by a ghostly apparition in her wardrobe. 11 Dec, 4th Day. Le Mengyao, who hosts a nighttime story-telling webcast, gets her friends, paranormal specialists Huzi (Zhang Tianbo) and Jiu’er (Wu Ye), to investigate by filling the flat with cameras and sensors. 12 Dec, 5th Day. During the night something triggers all the equipment, and Huzi spots Xiang Tian leaving by car in the alleyway. In the morning Le Mengyao tells Xiang Tian off for dropping by in the night to leave her a doll for her birthday. She also tells off her daughter for giving him a key, but later agrees to let her see Xiang Tian. 13 Dec, 6th Day. After another scare during the night, Le Mengyao calls Xiang Tian for his help in getting Le Wenwen back to bed. But in the morning the young girl seems to have slipped into a coma. 14 Dec, 7th Day. As the deadline of the ouija-board curse arrives, Le Mengyao investigates the history of her flat by talking to the young people who were briefly there before her and especially Lu Jingya (Liu Chenxia), the mother of the raped girl who hung herself.
REVIEW
A superior cast led by striking actress Huang Yi 黄奕, careful direction that goes for atmosphere over visual thrills, and a script that saves its best for last – all of these benefit Mortal Ouija 碟仙, a Mainland horror that, without re-inventing the wheel, brings a fresh feel to a familiar genre. Shot and certified back in 2016 but only released in summer 2019, it’s enjoyed surprising success for a genre that nowadays takes only a couple of million RMB per film, if that. Despite the extra handicap of a thoroughly generic title (literally, “Saucer Fairy”, referring to the movable implement on a ouija board), it’s clocked up an amazing RMB50 million, even lingering in the national top 10 for several days.
It’s the second feature by Lian Tao 廉涛, a performance graduate from Beijing Film Academy who previously co-directed Lonely Island 孤岛 (2014), a quirky horror film about a young widow and her best friend who are subjected to all manner of ghostly frights. Though not exactly successful, Island had a quirky appeal, and even forecasts some of Ouija‘s trademarks, like a limited number of players in a confined space and a seemingly insoluble mystery.
Set in wintry Beijing – though the few exteriors give it no special geographical identity – Ouija is basically a ghost story in a traditional old-style flat that’s just been rented by a single mother with a young daughter. When the kid sleepwalks and starts playing with an old ouija board in the storage room, the usual litany of strange events starts: a funny smell in the rooms, sightings of a female ghost, and lots of creaking doors. What the audience knows but the mother doesn’t is that, as the ouija board has been activated, someone will die in seven days’ time.
As the film counts down the days on screen, Lian and his four co-writers – including Guo Xi 郭曦, who co-wrote Lonely Island – take their time building up the atmosphere and, most importantly, explain most of the false climaxes as the plot progresses, instead of saving everything for a Big Reveal in the final 10 minutes and/or a psychologist’s explanation. This means that, instead of collapsing in the final furlong, the plot actually becomes meatier from the 60-minute mark onwards, as the mother digs up the past history of the flat by tracking down its previous occupants. As the full story is revealed, the final 20 minutes keep the audience guessing, and the grounded solution requires no rational explanation by an expert at the end. Instead, the film-makers play with that Mainland convention by having a jokey coda that hints at paranormal goings-on as well.
Shanghai-born Huang, 42, is a commanding and versatile actress (lawyer wife in Overheard 2 窃听风云2, 2011; revolutionary martyr in The Woman Knight of Mirror Lake 竞雄女侠秋瑾, 2011; tough cop in Drug War 毒战, 2012; classy love interest in The Legend Is Born: Ip Man 叶问前传, 2010) whose star has unfortunately dimmed on the big screen recently, her last substantial role being the lead in rom-com One Night or Whole Life 识色，幸也 (2017), which crashed at the box office. However, at the time of making Ouija, she’d just co-starred with Taiwan singer-actor Fan Yichen 范逸臣 (Cape No. 7 海角七号, 2008) in the costume drama Chinese Wine 国酒 (2016) and was to go on to co-star with him again in One Night, so their pairing in Ouija must have seemed commercially valid. Added to which, her role in the film of a single mother with a young daughter and an acerbic relationship with the child’s father had echoes of her well-publicised private life.
In Ouija her steady, confident playing grounds the film as well as giving it a sense of occasion above and beyond being just another horror quickie. Though second billed, Fan gets little screen time but is sympathetic as the daughter’s father. It’s Huang who dominates, though in a cool, unshowy way as a determined single mother; character warmth comes largely from the likeable Zeng Yunzhen 曾韵蓁 (The End of Year 一年到头, 2008) as her close friend, TV actress Wu Ye 吴烨 as the female half of a pair of paranormal investigators, and young Cheng Xiaoxia 程小夏 as the daughter. In the latter stages, veteran actress Liu Chenxia 刘晨霞 adds some weight as a previous tenant of the property, but all supporting roles are in fact smartly cast. Widescreen photography by Chen Jingfang 陈镜方 is meticulously framed, with cold, wintry colours underscoring the unheated flat; the uncredited synths music is more like an effects track, with noisy, scrapy bundles of sound.
CREDITS
Presented by Zhujiang Film Group (CN), Shanghai Ruicheng Culture Media (CN), Zhejiang Wishart Pictures Movies (CN), Dadi Century (Tianjin) (CN), Beijing Fengyue Film & TV Media (CN), Shanghai Lugang Film & TV Shareholding (CN). Produced by Beijing Fengyue Film & TV Media (CN), Beijing Guangzong Film & TV Culture (CN).
Script: Guo Yiwen, Sun Wanyi, Guo Xi, Liu Zongsheng, Lian Tao. Photography: Chen Jingfang. Editing: Tian Shifa, Wang Baoce. Music: uncredited. Art direction: Zhou Tao. Styling: Liu Jun. Costumes: Zhang Wei. Sound: Chen Hui, Ting Yaheng. Action: Li Chuanwei. Visual effects: Li Li. Executive direction: Liu Zongsheng.
Cast: Huang Yi (Le Mengyao), Fan Yichen (Xiang Tian), Cheng Xiaoxia (Le Wenwen), Wu Ye (Jiu’er), Ma Juanjuan (female ghost; Fang Fang), Liu Chenxia (Lu Jingya), Zeng Yunzhen (Xiaomin), He Jiaying (Na’na, Lu Jingya’s daughter), Zhang Tianbo (Huzi), Lu Jiahao (Ma Zhihui, Na’na’s step-father), Zhang Yuede (Xiao, professor), Huang Zixuan (property maintenance man), Song Mingyu (kindergarten teacher), Wu Tiehuan (old tenant downstairs), Yan Fenglong (Xu, doctor), Wang Shiyu (Xiaomin’s boyfriend), Zhang Hanbo (Li Qiang), Guo Wandong (Zhang Kexin), Zhuang Xin (property saleswoman), Chang Yuci (Zhang Shumei).
Release: China, 21 Jun 2019.