Red Wedding Dress

红嫁衣

China, 2025, colour/b&w, 2.35/1.5:1, 87 mins.

Directors: Xu Jun 徐俊, Liu Mingliang 刘明亮.

Rating: 4/10.

Despite a chaotic plot and confusing construction, this Republic-era horror movie has a few points of interest beyond its generic story.

STORY

Luoyang township, somewhere in southern China, sometime in the mid/late 1940s. At the invitation of Liu Qingshan (Yuan Xiangren), eldest member of the wealthy Liu family, professional embalmer Leng Yiran (He Yuchen) – who since childhood has also had the ability to see ghosts – and fengshui master Li Chengfeng (Zhang Bonan) arrive at the Liu household to investigate the apparent demonic possession of the second wife of his son Liu Zhentian (Zhu Jiazhen). They have come from Fujian province, representing their master. When they arrive, Liu Zhentian’s wife is being treated in the main courtyard by a group of exorcists, and even by a Christian priest, without success. Leng Yiran and Li Chengfeng immediately dismiss the demon possessing her. Liu Zhentian says a female doll seems to have taken over the house, intent on driving them all mad; even his young son sleepwalks at night talking to himself, and a strange odour fills the house. He dismisses Li Chengfeng’s suggestion that it is someone deliberately seeking revenge: the Liu family has roots in Luoyang going back hundreds of years and has always been liked and respected. They haven’t considered moving as the country is so unstable nowadays. Liu Qingshan says the family has hired many exorcists to solve the problem but all have turned out to be useless. He then shows them a room where he says a woman in a red bridal dress appears at night, and the female doll sits on a rocking horse, swaying back and forth. While inspecting another room, Leng Yiran has visions of a young woman being raped on the bed. Leng Yiran and Li Chengfeng then interview the father and son, recording them with a 16mm camera. (Liu Fengtian had brought his second wife and young son to live in the family mansion. Soon afterwards, Liu Fengxiang [Xu Nu], Liu Zhentian’s teenage daughter by his first marriage, had adopted a large female doll she’d found by the well in the rear courtyard. Liu Qingshan had ordered her to throw it away, as it was a doll used to accompany burials, not for living people to play with. Liu Fengxiang had pleaded with her father, saying she felt lonely after the death of her mother and his re-marriage, but Liu Fengtian had thrown the doll down the well. The doll had then tried to pull Liu Fengxiang down the well, and afterwards appeared lying in a corridor. Not long afterwards, Liu Fengxiang had been found dead by the well.) Leng Yiran finds the doll has been kept by the family and chained up like a statue next to the family shrine in the main courtyard. Liu Zhentian says he no longer believes in worshipping any deities, either Chinese or foreign, as all have proved fraudulent. Leng Yiran and Li Chengfeng agree to help but only if Liu Zhentian and his father stop making up stories about ghosts and tell them exactly what happened in the house. Liu Zhentian says it all started when his sworn brother Jia Zhou (Zhong Shiyan), against his advice, decided to get married on the evening of the Ghost Festival, held on the 15th day of the 7th month. [Jia Zhou had been found hung from the roof beam and his bride had vanished. The case had been investigated by a young, recently transferred police captain, Chen Guozhong [Zhang Chenbin], who dismissed Liu Zhentian’s theory that a ghost had been involved as feudal suspicion that had no place in Republican Cina. Liu Zhentian had then told Chen Guozhong there was a local legend about a red wedding dress.) Leng Yiran says she’s also heard the legend, in which a 16-year-old girl who was in love with a young man was forced by her mother to marry an old rich man instead. In his home she was relentlessly bullied by the man’s concubines and finally, during the Ghost Festival, threw herself down the courtyard well around midnight, wearing her red wedding dress. Liu Zhentian says he’s also recently heard stories of several people dying under mysterious circumstances in Luoyang, starting with Dai Wencai (Liu Shuo), a long-time employee of the Qiao family who had gone missing for many days, chased by creditors; he was finally found buried in a coffin, with rope marks round his neck and a smile on his face. Next was Jin Zuoma (Feng Meilun), an accountant, who murdered a whole family and was then found by a tree with gold bars rammed into his mouth. Then a fisherman, Luo Hu (Ye Andi), was pulled off his boat and drowned by a woman in a red dress, and finally a coffin-maker, Chen Ping (Yang Anqi), who’d once gang-killed a recently married young woman, spontaneously combusted one day and died in the Liu family’s courtyard. The more Leng Yiran and Li Chengfeng get drawn into the Liu family’s stories, the more they uncover the complex truth behind the whole affair, with people’s true identities revealed.

REVIEW

Set in Republican China, Red Wedding Dress 红嫁衣 is a period horror movie centred on a female ghost haunting the mansion of a wealthy family – nothing very original at first glance, except that, even among the hundreds of similar Chinese horrors, this one stands out for the sheer complexity of its backstory and its increasingly confusing construction. Despite all that, this latest feature by Jiangxi-born martial arts/horror specialist Xu Jun 徐俊, 33, is curiously watchable, not just to try to work out the plot but also because of its solid production values (on an obvious budget) and some more-than-solid performances. Local box office was RMB24 million, more than just okay for this kind of fare.

Jiangxi-born Xu, 33, has directed around a dozen genre movies during the past decade, as well as several online pictures; Red Wedding Dress is by far the most financially successful in his prolific career, which also includes acting in martial-arts roles. He’s been especially active during the present decade (Ma Yongzhen: The Boxer in Zhabei 马永贞之闸北决, 2020), and has recently been working regularly with actress He Yuchen 何雨宸 – who’s also the lead in Red Wedding Dress: Paper Bride 红嫁衣：纸新娘 (2025), released five months later but not a sequel – and, as here, with Liu Mingliang 刘明亮, a writer-director in his mid-30s. Red Wedding Dress, which was shot from Aug to Dec 2024, was also one of the last movies of Hong Kong action film-maker Yuan Xiangren 袁祥仁 – younger brother of famed martial-arts director Yuan Heping 袁和平 – who died in Jan 2026, aged 68.

The screenplay starts with a prologue in which an unseen bride with bound feet is lectured by her mother on how her forthcoming arranged marriage is much better for her than true love, even though the bride insists it’s now the Republican era, not the Qing dynasty. The five-minute segment ends vaguely, with the bridal procession interrupted by a strong wind in the woods and the waiting groom attacked by a ghost – a standard horror opener but one that does set up several running themes of the movie. The sequence is referred to later on, and the reason why the bride’s identity is never shown becomes a major plot point in the narrative chaos that grows after the first half-hour. The film throws in everything from genre staples like horror dolls, exorcism, exhumation and girls suiciding by jumping down wells to broader themes like feudal vs republican values, emerging female rights and the death of religious belief (both local and foreign). The latter are hardly developed with any depth, and effectively get lost in the general script chaos, but they do hint at attempts to do something slightly different from the genre norm.

Sichuan-born He, 24, who’s made a string of costume and period horrors for Xu the past couple of years, is good as the main exorcist, with an icy stare and cool delivery that bats effectively against the more emotional playing by Zhu Jiazhen 朱嘉镇 as the haunted party and Yuan as his batty father. As the fengshui master who partners He’s character, Zhang Bonan 张博楠 is just okay, with no strong personality in the script, while Zhang Chenbin 张宸彬, as the young police captain, is colourless.

Largely set in and around the Liu family mansion in a riverside township, the production looks handsome-beyond-its-budget thanks to d.p. Li Jun 李俊 (horrors Don’t Open the Door 别开门, 2016, Paper Man 2 替身纸人2, 2024) and art director Zhang Changxing 张长兴. The presence in the film of a 16mm camera looks ahistorical – mostly due to a much too modern model being used – but they had already been around for some time by the 1940s and makes sense given the owner’s background.

CREDITS

Presented by Zhejiang Liangxiaowucai Film (CN). Produced by Zhejiang Liangxiaowucai Film (CN).

Script: Liu Mingliang, Xu Jun, Chen Yulu. Photography: Li Jun. Editing: Chun Fen. Music editing: Li Yang, Chen Bo. Art direction: Zhang Changxing. Costumes: Yang Yang. Styling: Li Jing. Sound: Wang Jue. Sound effects: Yang Hongqiang, Su Xiaoli. Action: Shan Lei. Executive direction: Shan Lei, Wang Zengqiang. Artistic direction: Ye Jiao.

Cast: He Yuchen (Leng Yiran/Liu Pandi/Liu Zhaodi), Yuan Xiangren (Liu Qingshan, Liu Zhentian’s father), Zhang Bonan (Li Chengfeng, Leng Yiran’s associate), Zhang Chenbin (Chen Guozhong, police captain), Zhu Jiazhen (Liu Zhentian), Xu Ying (Zhou Shulan, wife of Liu Songyun), Liu Shuo (Dai Wencai/Zhang Guangbi), Liu Weiwei (Liu Laidi), Wang Liping (Chen Bijun, mother of Liu Songyun), Yang Zixuan (Liu Chenglong), Xu Nuo (Liu Fengxiang, wife of Liu Zhentian), Zhang Hongbin (Xu Mu), Xue Bin (Liu Songyun), Zhong Shiyan (Jia Zhou), Xu Shiyao (Jia Zhou’s concubine), Feng Meilun (Jin Zuoma), Yang Anqi (Chen Ping), Ye Andi (Luo Hu), Miao Li Yanbing (Li Xuantong, Li Chengfeng’s master).

Release: China, 30 May 2025.