The beginning of Get The Hell Out (逃出立法院) features the following disclaimer: “If you choose the wrong movie, you only have to wait 90 minutes; if you choose the wrong legislator, you have to wait four years.”
The people certainly chose the wrong lawmakers in this absurd satirical romp, as an ill-fated government scheme to get rich through an international venture (they call it ‘diplomacy’ here, of course) literally turns the entire legislative body, as well as the president, into bloodthirsty zombies.
Get The Hell Out is a relentless caricature of the nation’s fight-happy Legislative Yuan, government bureaucracy, rabid media industry and other issues such as authorities colluding with corporations to raze villages and build harmful factories. Director Wang I-fan (王逸帆) doesn’t just satirize the infamous legislature, he pokes fun at a wide range of uniquely Taiwanese phenomena, and one would need to be very familiar with the nation’s pop culture, web celebrities and recent sociopolitical events to get all the references in this film. If you don’t, the film is just another gory and campy zombie movie that is not worth your time.
Photo courtesy of CPT Entertainment
The film was slated for release in April, but the COVID-19 pandemic pushed it back until last week, which actually makes it even more relevant as the Legislative Yuan descended into violence again last month over Chen Chu’s (陳菊) appointment as Control Yuan president. The themes of (zombie) pandemic control and “Taiwan Can Help” would also resonate a lot more with audiences now than in four months ago.
Stylistically, Get The Hell Out is Taiwanese mainstream cinema’s trademark over-the-topness taken to the extreme as the characters use video game moves to fight infected Taoist priests and machine-gun toting Centers of Disease Control staff, and it also takes a page from Western cult movies with tons of blood and exaggerated sequences.
The nonstop zaniness gets tiring, though, especially in the middle of the film where much screen time is wasted on brainless battle and chase scenes. One would expect more given the loaded premise and scathing first half, as the plot gets caught up in its own shenanigans and loses its way. At points, it seems like Wang is just using the Legislative Yuan as a pretext to make a crazy zombie flick, whereas he should have been using the zombie pandemic as a device to delve deeper into government and social dysfunction.
Despite the missed opportunities, the movie still entertains overall, and serves as an example of where these otherwise tired tropes make sense, as there’s no better way to criticize the already ridiculous phenomena of brawling legislators than with even more ridiculousness.
The leads are Ying-ying (Megan Lai, 賴雅妍), a legislator dedicated to saving her hometown from being turned into a factory who loses her job after a beating up a paparazzi, and Yu-wei (Bruce Hung, 禾浩辰), a meek Legislative Yuan security guard who unexpectedly replaces Ying-ying and is caught between the warring factions. Of course, besides the zombies, the heroes also have to deal with the corrupt gangster-politician Li (Wang Chung-huang, 王中皇) who wears a bright magenta suit and struts around with his crew of bizarrely-dressed lackeys who call themselves “The Better Generation.”
Wang smartly steers clear of political factions, making the conflict more of a good-versus-evil between politicians who act out of greed and those who actually want to help society.
Amidst the chaos, Wang still tries to deliver an uplifting message about identifying with and protecting one’s homeland, whether it be a threatened seaside village or the entire nation. With many Taiwanese disillusioned in their country and wanting to “get the hell out,” Wang’s sentiment is definitely relevant, but this theme does not come through strongly enough and is buried in the frenetic action.
The transformation of top politicians — including the president — into zombies ultimately allows voters a second chance at choosing the right candidates, but will their replacements simply continue the ways of their predecessors? The nation’s legislators have been exchanging blows since the 1980s. Will things in Taiwan ever change? Is it worth staying and trying to make a difference? These are valid questions that Wang does explore — one just wishes he would have toned down the action just a bit to make more room for contemplation.
Taiwan’s English education system is being pulled apart by three opposing forces. Bilingual Nation 2030 pulls students toward English and global communication. Artificial Intelligence (AI) readiness pulls them toward digital judgment, verification and AI-mediated work. But Taiwan’s old exam culture pulls them back toward memorization, grammar drills, timed reading and correct answers. If the education system keeps using old exams to define success, it risks producing graduates who are neither genuinely bilingual nor genuinely AI-ready, but trained for tasks machines can already perform. The first force is Bilingual Nation 2030. Launched in 2018, the policy aimed to “help Taiwan’s workforce connect
It seems every few days one bumps into one of those “real man” comments in which Taiwan is urged to “face reality” or similar, and “make a deal,” with the speaker implying that soon it will be too late. “Deal” advocates always present themselves as having a superior grip on reality, and the manly ability to make the “hard choice.” Their testosterone-laden language often echoes that of Taiwan sellout advocates. Note that such commentary always specifies a process (“make a deal, work with, make progress”), never the end state of what occupation by a violent authoritarian colonialist state will entail. In
“Taiwan’s Opposition Leader Comes to US With a Message Straight Out of Beijing” read a May 31 headline in the Wall Street Journal. Top US administration officials and members of Congress almost certainly read the WSJ, and if there was a bullet point takeaway that people in Washington should absorb ahead of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chair Cheng Li-wun’s (鄭麗文) arrival in DC on June 9, that headline is it. The last few columns have discussed this very topic, and the timing is not coincidental. While those top officials likely do not read the Taipei Times, judging by the number
As someone who normally steers clear of books with “transcendence” or “metaphysics” in their subtitles, this reviewer — a casual observer of local belief systems since the 1990s — found Fabian Graham’s Money God Temples in Taiwan a challenging read. Those who’ve only dipped their toes into temple culture will likely need to parse several sections with special care if they’re to keep up with the author, a British ethnographic researcher whose previous books have investigated religious practices among ethnic Chinese in Southeast Asia. This scholarly volume examines a facet of Taiwan’s religious landscape that didn’t exist a century ago, and
RSS