Midnight Taxi (2009)
Author: CCW // Category: Amusing/Musing, Asia Gossips, Entertainment, Movie Reviews
It’s midnight, you’re tired, exhausted and you want to get home fast. You hail the fi rst taxi and get in, prompting an unseen driver on your home. But, you soon discover… it’s a ghost taxi.
What would you do? This is the question young director and screenwriter Zhang Jiangnan aims to pitch at his audiences this holiday season with his latest thriller Midnight Taxi.
“Everyone at some point in their lives has taken a taxi late at night, around midnight,” Zhang told the Global Times. “I think audiences will fi nd the premise of the movie simply and beautifully horrifying.” Midnight Taxi, Zhang’s fi rst outing as a director, hits screens today in Beijing, aiming to cash in on audiences looking for an escape for the upcoming holiday season. The movie’s plot revolves around taxi driver Xu Zi’s (Jordan Chan) spooky encounters with a ghost.
“Xu is a hard-working driver who hasn’t given up his dream of being a writer. He acts as a kind of detective, discovering the truth step by step. Jordan Chan did a wonderful job playing him,” said Zhang.
Unlike Japanese directors, known for over-using atmospheric and suspenseful music to build up a scary mood, Zhang believes that a scary story will always play a more important role in spooking moviegoers.
“Consider this, what would you do, if you were to fi nd out, that your girlfriend, who you’ve just spent an entire week with, has been dead the whole time?” Zhang asked. “Fear in horror fi lms comes from the mind, not from a sensory experience.”
The ending of Midnight Taxi is being kept a tightly held secret by Zhang and his crew.
When asked if he is a superstitious person, Zhang wouldn’t answer directly, instead saying that he “only knows that there are no ghosts in my movie.” This is not the fi rst time Zhang has been involved in the production of a made-in-China horror movie, what he calls a genre that is being sorely overlooked in the production of fi lms on the mainland.
“It’s a pity that a large share of the movie-making market in China is still unexplored. Thrillers and comedies are evenly matched in Hollywood, but in China things are di erent. Every year around New Year we see a lot of comedies but few thrillers,” said Zhang, who was born in the 80s. Zhang explained his reason for choosing a release date around the holiday season so he could avoid competition from other directors, duking it out at the box-office.
“To be honest, compared to all the new big-budget blockbusters that star tons of celebrities, our movie seems a little weak. But we have the advantage of young couples and white-collar workers coming out to see our movie that want to have the living stuffing scared out of them. Horror fi lms are a good way of letting loose of all the pressures that come from daily life,” said Zhang, joking that he hoped his low budget will become the next sleeper hit, in the same vein as Crazy Stone.
Zhang Yimou’s over-hyped and lackluster A Simple Noodle Story has already netted nearly 160 million yuan after nine days in Chinese theaters, the star-studded Body Guard and Assassins hit screens last Sunday and James Cameron’s blue movie Avatar is already out as well.
So while the odds stacked up against Midnight Taxi are nothing short of frightening, look for Zhang to make a name for himself if his scary taxi movie takes moviegoers for a ride.
Credit : Global News
