Dead Talents Society

In the afterlife there is an industry for ghosts. A ghost who can frighten the living becomes famous, gets an agent and an audience; one who frightens nobody is forgotten, and being forgotten means ceasing to exist. A newly dead young woman with no talent at all lands in this world. Catherine, a former star, takes her on as an apprentice and the two of them try to get back on stage. John Hsu directs, with Gingle Wang, Sandrine Pinna, Chen Bolin and Eleven Yao. The idea is Asian horror mocking itself. The long haired woman in a white nightdress, the ghost in the lift, the hand in the bathroom: all of it is treated here as staging, and the ghosts rehearse the clichés. There are direct references to Ring and its relatives. The actual subject is the economy of fame. What is described is an order in which visibility equals existence and falling out of view means erasure, and that has nothing to do with being a ghost. It was a large commercial success in Taiwan and became the country's Oscar submission, with several nominations at the Golden Horse awards. John Hsu was already known for Detention, a hard political horror film, and this runs entirely the other way. Who it is for: viewers who like horror comedy, Taiwanese cinema and genre parody. Who it is not for: most of the references require knowing the Asian horror canon, and the final section pushes the emotional register too hard.