T he debut feature by 25-year-old director Kevin Ko (柯孟融), Invitation Only (絕命派對) is Taiwan’s answer to the genre of horror films made popular by the Saw and Hostel film series. With a cast of pretty idols and sexy models, the film is a 90-minute ride of guilty thrills that combines graphic violence, repulsive torture and sexually suggestive imagery with bitter commentary on a wealth-obsessed society.
Promising actor Bryant Chang (張睿家) plays Wade, an ordinary guy who makes his living by running errands and chauffeuring around his wealthy young boss, known as President Yang (Jerry Huang, 黃志瑋). When Yang asks him to attend a private party by passing as a cousin, Wade is thrilled by the invitation to join the world of the rich, young and fabulous.
It turns out to be the best party ever. Wade wins big at gambling, enjoys a casual fling with supermodel Dana (Maria Ozawa) and makes new friends who include Hitomi (Julianne, 朱蕾安), Lin (Ma Kuo-hsien, 馬國賢) and Holly (He Chia-wen, 何嘉文).
The debauchery becomes a nightmare when the group finds pianist Robert brutally murdered. Hunted down one by one by a masked killer, Wade and his friends soon realize they are prey for a sadistic, high-society audience with a taste for the spectacle of torture and slaughter.
The invitees now have to fight back if they want to survive this killing game of the rich.
At its best, Invitation Only smartly plays with society’s obsession with the wealthy and the sense of unease over the widening gap between the elite and everybody else. The film effectively uses model Liz and Japanese AV idol Ozawa as disposable playthings and male model Huang as a young and powerful man of pedigree with a hint of menace.
Director Ko caught the attention of local film circles with his 2004 short horror flick The Print (鬼印), which circulated widely on the Internet while he was still a college student. In his debut feature, Ko follows the trend sparked by Saw (2004) and Hostel (2005) and conjures up visceral and frightful experiences through graphic portrayals of gore and violence. The narration is, however, carried out in a plain and sometimes uninspired manner that kills the suspense in the first third of the film.
The story picks up when the psychopathic killer begins to hack his way through his victims. With a stomach-churning shot in which Wade cuts off his own thumb and an extended torture scene where Holly is mutilated by a knife, this slasher film is guaranteed to make audiences fidget in their seats.
Spiced up with local zest, Invitation Only is a competent first effort that aims to cultivate an audience for a genre that is rarely tackled in Chinese-language cinema.
JUNE 30 to JULY 6 After being routed by the Japanese in the bloody battle of Baguashan (八卦山), Hsu Hsiang (徐驤) and a handful of surviving Hakka fighters sped toward Tainan. There, he would meet with Liu Yung-fu (劉永福), leader of the Black Flag Army who had assumed control of the resisting Republic of Formosa after its president and vice-president fled to China. Hsu, who had been fighting non-stop for over two months from Taoyuan to Changhua, was reportedly injured and exhausted. As the story goes, Liu advised that Hsu take shelter in China to recover and regroup, but Hsu steadfastly
Taiwan’s politics is mystifying to many foreign observers. Gosh, that is strange, considering just how logical and straightforward it all is. Let us take a step back and review. Thanks to the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), starting this year people will once again have Christmas Day off work. In 2002, the Scrooges in the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) said “bah, humbug” to that. The holiday is not actually Christmas, but rather Constitution Day, celebrating the enactment of the Constitution of the Republic of China (ROC) on December 25, 1947. The DPP and the then pan-blue dominated legislature
Focus Taiwan reported last week that government figures showed unemployment in Taiwan is at historic lows: “The local unemployment rate fell 0.02 percentage points from a month earlier to 3.30 percent in May, the lowest level for the month in 25 years.” Historical lows in joblessness occurred earlier this year as well. The context? Labor shortages. The National Development Council (NDC) expects that Taiwan will be short 400,000 workers by 2030, now just five years away. The depth of the labor crisis is masked by the hundreds of thousands of migrant workers which the economy absolutely depends on, and the
If you’ve lately been feeling that the “Jurassic Park” franchise has jumped an even more ancient creature — the shark — hold off any thoughts of extinction. Judging from the latest entry, there’s still life in this old dino series. Jurassic World Rebirth captures the awe and majesty of the overgrown lizards that’s been lacking for so many of the movies, which became just an endless cat-and-mouse in the dark between scared humans against T-Rexes or raptors. Jurassic World Rebirth lets in the daylight. Credit goes to screenwriter David Koepp, who penned the original Jurassic Park, and director Gareth Edwards, who knows
RSS