Lonely Island
孤岛
China, 2014, colour/b&w, 2.35:1, 82 mins.
Directors: Lian Tao 廉涛, Wang Kunhao 王琨皓.
Rating: 4/10.
Quirkily scripted horror movie about a haunted young widow and her best friend.
STORY
Somewhere in China, Jul 2013. After a press conference for the publication of his latest work, online horror novelist Zuo Zhanpeng (Mao Yi), 30, drives home for dinner with his wife, Zhang Kexin (Li Yiyi). En route he’s killed in a car crash when a tyre is punctured by a nail in the road. Some time later, Zhang Kexin, who runs a coffee shop with her best friend Shanshan (Tian Suhao), is still distressed from losing Zuo Zhanpeng. She imagines he is still in the flat with her, and someone is also leaving a jar of his favourite fruit, sliced pears, along with the ground pepper he also liked to add. Shanshan, who thinks Zhang Kexin just needs a rest, comes by to set up a video camera in the flat. But even she is spooked out by a large, wooden ventriloquist’s doll that has mysteriously arrived in a box; she finally sets fire to it when it seems to follow her around. When she and Zhang Kexin go back inside, there is a fresh jar of sliced pears on the table; the video footage supplies no clues as to how it got there. Zhang Kexin and Shanshan decide to track down the address on the box, and find the location in one of Zuo Zhanpeng’s notebooks. Sengsuoluo island lies off the coast and is reached by a long causeway road; when they arrive at the large house, it’s uninhabited but full of Zuo Zhanpeng’s notes as well as a photo of him and Zhang Kexin on the wall. In one room the ventriloquist’s doll is typing at a desk. Zhang Kexin and Shanshan flee in terror from the house but then come across a gravestone with the former’s name on it. Zhang Kexin gets the idea that Zuo Zhanpeng is not dead and is in hospital waiting for her to arrive. She sets off with Shanshan to find him.
REVIEW
A slightly out-of-the-ordinary horror quickie that’s mostly centred on just two characters running around scared, Lonely Island 孤岛 features a clever solution to a seemingly intractable puzzle but one which also allows the writers to ignore any kind of logic and imperil the two heroines in any way they choose. Co-written and directed by Lian Tao 廉涛 and Wang Kunhao 王琨皓 – along with Anhui-born writer Guo Xi 郭曦, 32, who also worked on Lian’s next horror, Mortal Ouija 碟仙 (2019) – it’s chiefly a big-screen showcase for dancer-turned-actress Li Yiyi 李依伊, then 22, whose career has since stubbornly remained in TV drama. Given little to do apart from look puzzled and/or scared, she’s actually outshone in personality by model/actress Tian Suhao 田苏灏, 25, as the extrovert BFF. The film’s third-billed male lead, Mao Yi 毛毅, 28, has only a small part despite holding the key to all the screamy goings-on which form the bulk of the movie. For some reason he’s revoiced by director Lian himself.
The film’s poster – which cheekily warns “No Unaccompanied Women Allowed In” – gives the impression that it’s the third entry in a horror franchise that began with surprise hit Mysterious Island 孤岛惊魂 (2011, RMB89 million) and then belly-flopped with Mysterious Island 2 孤岛惊魂2 (2013, RMB17 million). But the only common factor is financier/producer Beijing East Light Film, as the creative team is completely different from the first two movies’. In any event, it was the nail in the coffin for horror films starting with the words 孤岛 (“lonely island”), as the movie earned only a tiny RMB3.6 million – a figure which by then was average for the genre, whose initial boom had peaked around the time of Mysterious Island.
The script wants to be about the actual process of creation in a writer’s mind and the power wielded over characters by a writer, but both of these lofty aspirations get lost between the film’s bookends as the two BFFs – one (Li) just widowed by the death of her horror-novelist husband (Mao), the other (Tian) along to provide dialogue – run from pillar to post pursued by everything from creaking doors and ghostly apparitions to zombies and an evil-looking ventriloquist’s dummy. After the first half-hour – a large chunk of which is just the two women in a spooky flat – the film moves to an offshore island, thereby justifying its title. The solution to all the haunted hijinks is doubly clever in that it doesn’t require the usual coda of a psychologist or doctor to explain what really happened.
A Beijing Film Academy performance graduate, Lian was to refine the format of setting a horror story within a confined space with only a handful of players in his subsequent Mortal Ouija, a much more mature movie and with a quality cast led by experienced actress Huang Yi 黄奕. (Shot and certified in 2016, it was not released until summer 2019, but with surprising success.) In Lonely Island he’s still finding his feet as a film-maker, aided by some particularly versatile widescreen photography by Hong Kong’s Feng Yuanwen 冯远文 [Edmond Fung], from natural via ghostly to poetic.
The film’s original Chinese title was 笔墨人生 (literally “The Writing Life”), which explains why the hero at the end pointedly tells his doctor that’s the name of his latest book. In a further quirk, billed as creative producer is Hong Kong’s Zhao Chongji 赵崇基 [Derek Chiu], then in a fallow patch after directing the Mainland-funded revolutionary drama 72 Martyrs 英雄喋血 (2011) and Beijing rom-com flop My Boyfriends 我的男男男男朋友 (2013), on both of which d.p. Feng had also worked.
CREDITS
Presented by Beijing East Light Film (CN), Beijing AirMedia Film & TV (CN), Zhujiang Film & Media (CN), Beijing Great Achievement Movie Culture & Media (CN). Produced by Beijing East Light Film (CN), Beijing Great Achievement Movie Culture & Media (CN).
Script: Lian Tao, Wang Kunhao, Guo Xi. Photography: Feng Yuanwen [Edmond Fung]. Editing: Liu Wei. Music: Li Siguang. Art direction: Xu Haijiang. Costumes: Fang Cheng, Liu Caizhi. Styling: Yan Cong, Lu Ruyan. Sound: Zhang Guancheng, Liu Xinhe, Shi Zhijie, Sun Weiguo, Li Siguang, Zhang Yilin. Visual effects: Li Li (Soulpower Culture Media). Executive direction: Cao Dushan.
Cast: Li Yiyi (Zhang Kexin), Tian Suhao (Shanshan), Mao Yi (Zuo Zhanpeng), Lu Ruyan (coffee-shop waitress; Lian, doctor), Li Du (Wang, doctor), Wang Qingqing (doctor’s assistant), Jin Xing (emergency doctor), Liu Qi (doctor’s assistant), Hao Miao, Zhang Lanyi, Chen Suruo (nurses), Ma Yansong (Xu, old teacher).
Release: China, 31 Oct 2014.