Rigor Mortis 僵尸 (2013), Full Spoilers

Chinese zombie and vampire films used to be very silly things. In Chinese culture, the two creatures are one in the same, but there was something about them that made it hard for horror movie fans to take them seriously. After akkm the hopped around with their arms outstretched. There was a practical reason for this. After rigor mortis sets in, a corpse literally can't walk. A dead body's muscles are too constricted without proper blood flow. The visual of a zombie hopping around like bunny rabbits is just too weird to take seriously -- even in Chinese culture. This is why Chinese zombies became a comedy genre at one point in Hong Kong cinema. However, a 2013 Juno Mak film tried to actually make these monsters unique again. And it succeeded. Rigor Mortis 僵尸 is the sort of film that Dario Argento would have made -- if he was young and Chinese.  Juno Mak as the same love of odd and unique camera angles and gliding shots that suggests that he really, really might like films like Suspiria. So, lets break this story down. 

The movie begins with a formerly famous Hong Kong actor moving into a slum. He's down on his luck, and he his basically going there to die. Only, he doesn't know that the building is extremely haunted. In the process of hanging himself, he becomes possessed by vengeful ghosts. A retired vampire hunter in the neighborhood eventually saves him.

Essentially, he has moved into an apartment inhabited by vengeful spirits.  This is one plot thread. The other involves an old couple. 

Tragedy happens, and the old wife can't bar to go one without the man who has been in her life for decades. In a fit of vulnerability, she consults a Taoist priest that is into black magic. The old woman wants to bring her life partner back from the dead. 

Of course, when you resurrect the dead in horror films, things never end well. That's just cross cultural and international for all sorts of zombies. Only, instead of becoming a traditional Chinese zombie, the old man becomes something far more worse. 

The two vengeful spirits from the failed actor's apartment take possess the Chinese zombie, making him unlike anything hopping monster a film lover would have seen in old Hong Kong horror comedies. 

The failed actor then has to teem up with the retired zombie / vampire hunter to take action. 

   

And, yes, the vampire hunter walks around this entire film wearing nothing but a bathrobe, an undershirt, and boxer shorts. The film ends tragically. The monster is destroyed, but so are the people fighting it. That ending is hearbreaking enough, and then Juno Mak goes in for a further plot twist. 

The whole film with just a fever dream / death vision. The story is book ended by the actor committing suicide in the beginning and in the end. This was all just an interior psychodrama that flashed through his head as he was hanging himself. And that, by itself, explains and artfully excuses all the surreal inconsistencies in the film. 

This is an impressive first outing for a first-time director. The visual of the film are intense, but they are put together by a director that obviously has an eye for exquisite imagery and complex metaphor. If I had to make a comparison, I would go back to my earlier Dario Argento reference. I have to say early Argento, because the famed Italian master got extremely lazy as he got older. Rigor Mortis, however, makes me curious what Juno Mak does next as a filmmaker.