The lens of the devil-- comment on Wen Ziren's horror film "lurking" series

the "lurking" series is a complicated ghost story, the three stories are intertwined and intertwined, and the production cost of 2 million yuan has earned nearly hundreds of millions of dollars at the box office, which cannot but be said to be very successful. The narrative structure of this series of movies has been amazingly complex, almost no one can understand its story logic, and no one can explain the reasonable time-space sequence and logical structure of the whole story. The characteristics of the story itself led to a successful case of winning huge box office benefits with small-budget horror films, and the mystery of the plot has become a riddle that sinks into a confined space forever.

the director is a legend. Wen Ziren, who made the film, is the one who directed Fast and Furious 7, which is currently a resounding victory, ranking first at the global box office (referring to the results of the year when the article was published). Wen Ziren also created and established the classic horror film "chainsaw" series. In "lurking", Wen Ziren opened a new "ghost world" and constructed new rules of the game in this psychic world, which is a multi-consciousness space similar to "Inception": when a person's soul is out of the body, his soul may enter the "alien world", which is full of darkness and sadism, and he must find a way to return to his body as soon as possible. Because there are more dead spirits wandering in other worlds, longing for life and resurrection. If his soul is far away for too long, other dead spirits will seize his body and resurrect his flesh. And the dead spirits actually carry their own memories and experiences, and they appear in different images: sometimes it is a son, sometimes it is an evil and powerful mother who occupies her son's memory, and they share a dead spirit and occupy the same body-which indirectly explains the alternating appearance of Parker Koran and his mother in lurking 2.

the white female evil spirit that haunts Josh's mother's house is actually Pike Curran's memory of his mother, who always manipulates him, controls him, and encourages him to become cruel. Parker Koran wanted to use Josh's physical resurrection to have a normal and complete family life, but that wish was soon dashed by his mother, who forbade him to call him Pike, the name his father had given him. From her behavior, we can analyze that this woman may have suffered serious domestic violence or hurt by her husband, which makes her extreme, closed, controlling and disgusted with men. She doesn't even allow her son to look like a boy. The so-called "bride in black" is Pike himself, he was instilled by his mother to dress up and pretend to be a woman, Pike once wanted to castrate himself in reality. When the exorcist Elise picked up a chair and slammed Parker's mother into the other world, Pike fell to the ground in reality. The complex and dark relationship between Parker Koran and his mother actually implies the gender anxiety of young boys in the real world and the entangled relationship between parasitic and anti-parasitic personality, control and anti-control between them and their mother. For the control and enslavement in love, it is a general and penetrating meaning.

Pike's evil spirit carries his mother's will, and his mother successfully parasites in the depths of his soul and memory. But he always wanted to get rid of this parasitism, which led to a long battle between him and his mother.

Pike is afraid that being too close to his mother will turn him into a girl. This long-term fear of gender dislocation leads him to castrate himself and want to vent at once and get rid of his own nightmare of being castrated.

Pike's mother is really just a woman in white in his memory, who has completely died in both the real world and the other world. And Pike is the old witch dressed in black. No matter in reality or in other worlds, he runs over in the shadow of his mother and sinks forever in the trauma of his childhood. The fact that he killed so many girls in his lifetime is a testament to his own gender anxiety and sexual failure.

people who have the ability to get out of the body and the old, the weak, the sick and the disabled are very dangerous and vulnerable to invasion and contention by the dead. In "lurking 3", the aggressive evil spirit destroys the living person to a disability and then tries to invade and capture her. It is worth noting that both Pike's family and Josh's family when he was young, including the family he formed as an adult, are typical of the American middle class. This class has family relationships full of tension, deceit and mistrust; mother-child ethics of tension and repression. In this class, material life is not a problem, but the lack of sense of security in the depths of human nature in abundance and ample space, the alienation and isolation among family members, the stress and anxiety borne by male members as family leaders, and the potential identity crisis are all hidden and tactfully expressed. The entanglement of the relationship between mother and son, the distance and mistrust between husband and wife, too many children make people physically and mentally exhausted, these contents in "lurking" have the magic of hitting the inner shadow and confusion of the public, and the story it tells is close to real life. reflects the bitterness and tiredness of general life.

Wen Ziren established this complex ghost world, and some of the photography and space scheduling features that he has always had in shooting ghost films come down in a continuous line and are extremely distinct. He is a perfectionist and master of lens scheduling and the use of color symbols, including filters, colors, classics, excellent composition and position sensitivity. Wen Ziren is good at using a large wide angle to chase ghosts or movements in several rooms in an enclosed space at the same time, which makes his mirror language dense and dynamic, with a huge amount of information. These clever shots bear the shadow of the work "Shining" by Kubrick, a master of horror. If Kubrick uses a low and calm eye to look at a person's madness; Wen Ziren, on the other hand, uses vigilant and carefully planned motion shots to follow in the footsteps of ghosts. These image elements are the unique symbols and symbols of this Asian director who is gradually rising to fame in Hollywood Vanity Fair. When you carefully study this "lurking" series, which has emerged as a new force in the field of horror films, you will find Wen Ziren's skillful and thoughtful photography and composition skills. Be good at using cinematic and formal expressions to help narration, and use psychological cues to render the atmosphere of terror.. The picture is full of spatial levels, unique light and shadow, soul-stirring and intriguing. Wen Ziren has mastered how to use image and color psychology to finish telling the whole ghost story.

"lurking" is different from the average North American horror movie, which uses a lot of plasma or screams. It has almost no blood stains and cruel slaughter scenes. Only silent space, complex stairs and vertiginous overshot and upside-down shots, some sensitive and exciting colors, and sudden sharp soundtracks, just rely on these to successfully arouse the suspense and fear of the audience and ensure the continuous success of the series. The lens of "lurking" is magic. Let's take a look at "lurking 2" and see how he does it.

big upside-down shots of major buildings, creating feelings of pressure, dizziness and uneasiness. Pay attention to the slanted lines in these compositions. In photographic psychology, diagonal lines always mean instability and instability, indicating the coming storm and fate of the family.

the building has the feeling that it is about to collapse, isn't it? The following big overshot and tilt lens are similar to the mirror sense of the abyss:

Color Psychology, restless and dangerous "red": Wen Ziren uses a lot of red in "lurking 2". The red door passed by the exorcist:

pay attention to the edge of the wide-angle lens above, with a slight fisheye convex feeling, which makes the whole picture full of instability and weirdness. Red still steadily embellishes the important corner of the picture.

Grandma's scarlet lipstick

Dalton, the second son with soul-out-of-body ability, is also in danger, surrounded by red.

in the following picture, why doesn't this seemingly ethereal, warm and slightly virtual panorama of the children's room not give us the feeling of Wonderland? Because it is in the pale background, decorated with a lot of red, it is these red, foreshadowing the magic and ferocity of the scene. It is not Wonderland, but the depths of the magical alien world, about the unbearable and painful memories carried by the masochistic spirits.

A lot of blood red:

the baby's Carly is covered with this disturbing red. The night lights in her room are red, and she has been harassed by the dead:

these reds dot the corners and sometimes fill the whole picture. From a professional point of view, it is close to the color of human blood. When it is only used in some corners, it implies the inner unease and fear of the characters, but when these blood-like reds fill and invade the whole picture, it indicates the outbreak of major contradictions and the emergence of evil spirits. it shows that the normal world is being engulfed by other worlds.

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Wen Ziren highlights several major characters by lighting and limiting light sources, and succeeds in keeping their bodies hidden in the dark, not only to continue to express the progress of the story and the reactions of the characters, but also to reveal their true situation: they have been shrouded and engulfed by darkness and blood and entered another world.

Green: not only use red, but Wen Ziren also uses green to express mystery and negativity. Have you noticed that green is also the color of rust, and subconsciously it also gives people a hint of decay and weirdness. Coincides with the old life experiences of the dead.

the green filter is obviously used in the above picture, which makes the whole picture feel green. Did you find it?

Blue and White: in addition, Wen Ziren uses a blue-and-white filter to express the protagonist's pallor and imminent collapse. Pay attention to the following shot:

her fake husband, Josh, who is physically occupied by Pike's dead spirit, looks abnormal and the flesh is rotting. Josh looked haggard and powerless. In the following shot, the smiling Josh is so disturbing that he notices the glittering green light on the wooden door panels and desktop behind him.

hard white light: as Josh and the exorcists sneak into the alien world and approach the truth, the alien world is covered by a dream of pale colors, and the cold light shows that the world has lost its vitality, becoming a cold corpse and a dead silence:

the following picture is clearly shrouded in a white veil-like filter, not only in the dead world, but also in the deep memory of Parker Koran, the evil spirit, about his mother's control and distortion of him. These pictures are ethereal and vague, symbolizing non-physical memories. Mother's ferocious face is in the visual focus of the whole picture, and the evil and violent she is the focus of the camera.

I have to admit that although the "lurking" series is difficult to top the list of world classic horror films because of the confusion and excessive complexity of the story, in the high-definition version, you can still be attracted by its lens language, which is excellent and elegant. Full of self-confidence, with its own magic.

below are the opening shots of the high-definition version of "lurking 1". I intercepted two pictures at random, which almost have the charm, ethereal and delicate details of high-definition digital black-and-white photography. The repressed indoor darkness and overexposed light make this quiet space already quiet, magical and secretive, but also understand the shooting style of the film, make a good psychological presupposition of terror, and attract the audience to enter.

Wen Ziren has the fastidiousness and skill of a professional background. Every shot, composition, light and shadow is to assist narrative and expression. He does not waste a trace of color and picture. Everything is thoughtful and complementary. These mirror words are extremely professional at the technical level, they are charming and well-structured. Wen Ziren uses scarlet red, decadent and confused green, as well as green and blue-white filters, not only to construct a dangerous external environment, but also to hint at the character's inner frustration and sense of collapse. Sensitive lens moving at the speed of human steps and eyes in a confined and complex space; A wide-angle lens like a stone and a few birds can easily peep into the story in several rooms and express it at the same time, establishing the interaction and pursuit between the characters, and also causing the distortion and suppression of the space; the tilted top or back shot makes people dizzy and frightened, and there is a sharp and deliberate thriller soundtrack, and the demonic lens is created-- it's almost impossible.Imitated, because this sense of mirror is the image narrative intuition and expression feeling cultivated by long-term operation and shooting, Wen Ziren has this rare intuition of using film elements to carry out image narration. These characteristics make his horror films more and more mature, stable and of good quality. Even if there are no large traces of blood and screams in the story, he can rely on his experienced lens configuration and picture feeling to perfect a horror story, which has real childhood nightmares, mental games, and a full sense of horror.

in this film review, we focus on the general psychological construction and mirror features in latent 2, which is distinctive and distinctive. The formal style and expression of the film accomplishes the aggressiveness and sharpness of the story. In the future, I will continue to write some magic scenes and expressions of other films in the "lurking" series. Compared with the old-fashioned, shrunken and pretentious plots of most horror films, "lurking" has the serious structure and unlimited imagination of Wen Ziren's screenwriting, full of details, and the thoughtfulness and refinement of the story itself has won unanimous praise. At the photography level, it is almost blameless, all these efforts make it possible for the film to continue its vitality and produce sequels.