Welcome to our series of
Chinese Horror Movies Explained,
In a country where horror movies are
heavily regulated and censored,
film makers need to find clever ways
to get around regulations,
and in this series we explore
how they did it.
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If you know of a Chinese horror film
you want us to look at,
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And an obvious warning but this is pretty
much a spoiler filled video. 
Watch at your own peril.
In this episode we go to 2016,
a massive year for Chinese horror movies,
and look at the awesomely titled Ghost Hospital,
also known by a weird French
type name Carrie Inperiue. 
Or however you say that. 
This classic is directed by Guojun Yin,
who is known for this film 
and stars Bianca Bai, Changxi Li, 
Kar-Ying Law and Peng Meng
With a huge score of 2.6 on Douban,
let’s settle in and see what this is about.
In Chinese horror movies, the words
“mental illness” are thrown around 
more than a basketball at an NBA game. 
Like most of these “horror” films, it stops
being a horror film after about 30 minutes 
and then turns into a thriller. 
But the first 30 minutes of horror are the
type of horror you’ve come to expect already.
Weird ghost faces, hallucinations,
demented killers and a crazy hospital patient. 
That’s pretty much the first third summed up.
[If you have captions on - good move. I can use
them to warn you of the jump scare in 30 seconds]
[It's coming shortly!]
Let’s take a quick look at what this movie is about. 
A woman, An, takes her lover, Guan Tian,
to the hospital to get his leg cast removed. 
Her daughter from a previous marriage,
Xuanxuan, tags along for the trip, 
not wanting to left alone at home. 
Which makes sense since she looks
to be about 7 years old, 
and who leaves a 7 year old child at home alone? 
After leaving Guan Tian with the nurse,
An falls asleep and awakes in a panic. 
Frantically, she searches for her boyfriend,
not her daughter who has mysteriously
gone missing, and discovers that the
orthopaedic ward in the hospital doesn’t exist.
For you see, this is a Ghost Hospital.
Well not really, it’s a hospital that is
about to shut down, 
and this is its last day of operation. 
Which is good, as a quick tour around the
hospital shows how awful this building is. 
Her panic attack attracts the attention of the head
nurse after she bursts into the nurse’s private room. 
It’s around this time the words “mental illness”
start getting thrown around as the nurse 
calls the security guard,
who then calls the hospital director, 
who then calls the hospital psychiatrist. 
As she freaks out more and more,
two mysterious knife welding cloaked
figures start hunting her. 
But she gets rescued by a man she met at
the start of the film and awakes, 
again, on a hospital bed.
It’s here where the movie takes it turn and
we find out that this man has orchestrated 
this whole event to steal money off An. 
She runs a company that just went public, 
so she is under a lot of stress,
but is apparently now flush with cash.
She refuses to give him money and escapes
from the man and the other two killers, 
who take off their masks to reveal they are
the security guard and the nurse 
from the fake orthopaedic ward.
Then, in a nod to the Jodie Foster movie
Panic Room, she holds up in a secure 
store room in the basement of the hospital. 
Oh it’s worth mentioning at this point that she
has been reunited with Xuanxuan, her daughter. 
So she is locked in a panic room with 3
crazed people after her, 
now threatening to kill her invalid boyfriend. 
Because he is now in a wheelchair.
What is going on in this movie?
Well sorry to disappoint you,
but this one isn’t really a horror film. 
The pay off here is that her boyfriend
is actually the mastermind. 
Yep, it’s a kidnapping and extortion plotline.
An can’t believe that Guan Tian was lying to her,
like she is the first woman in the world who has 
ever been tricked by a lover! 
He wants her money and he wants
to kill her and her daughter. 
Yes, this adorable, if annoying, little girl.
But An is smart, because she has a way to
protect her money from being extorted 
and she uses it to her advantage.
She’s is also helped out by the creepy guy
we meet at the start of the film, 
who is also the same guy who looks after
Xuanxuan when she is flipping out at the hospital.
I don’t really understand what this guy really
wants as she accuses him of wanting 
more money for a deposit, but a deposit for what?
Anyway, they have a happy ending where
they get together and live happily ever after.
I’m torn about this film. 
It’s obviously not good, but I am not sure
whether to class it as a 
bad horror or a bad thriller. 
But since the poster went with the horror theme
and the word Ghost in the title, 
well we’ll class it as a horror flick.
There is potential here though. 
The hospital setting is awesome, and yes,
it is overdone in the horror genre, 
but it’s done well here. 
It also has a proper explanation for it being
empty too which was welcomed.
There are also no obvious plot holes.
[A lot of not so obvious ones though!]
The storylines are tied up satisfactorily enough,
but I think the issue here is that it wanted 
to be a horror film but didn’t know
how to create a valid second half, 
so it turned into a thriller which wasn’t there at the start. 
How very Korean of it.
Watch out for the next
Chinese Horror Movie Explained, 
where we will take a look at The Strange House. 
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