Dead Talents Society Review: Chen Bolin, Sandrine Pinna Are The (After) Life Of The Party In Beetlejuice-y Horror-Com

Dead Talents Society (NC16)

Starring Chen Bolin, Sandrine Pinna, Gingle Wang, Eleven Yao

Directed by John Hsu

The dead have a busy afterlife working for, well, a living with all sorts of crazy, catty drama.

Just like us.

The glamorous among them are celebrities who compete to be the scariest spooks in the human world to snag trophies in the annual Golden Ghost Awards. They're cheered on by the enthusiastically departed, crow about themselves on a talkshow, lap up Morgue magazine — Vogue, geddit? — while ruling the noose, sorry, roost as very admired urban legends.

Catherine (See You Tomorrow’s Sandrinne Pinna from) is the has-been urban-legend queen who’s lost her mojo to a younger diva and former protege, Jessica (Eleven Yao). Her routine of terrifying living people as the ‘backbending femme” resident spook in haunted Room 414 in a seedy The Shining-style hotel is getting worn out and passe.

Especially when one unafraid IT geek-guest thinks that things are just falling off no-big-deal and the creepy meddling on his laptop screen — a mainstay in so many horror movies — is due to computer glitches.

“Back then, you could get away with cliches,” one old ghost grumbles about simpler, no-Internet fright times.

To Catherine, the losers in the underworld are pathetic. The most pitiful one doesn't even have a name and is simply called “Newbie”, “Rookie”, “Student”, whatever. Who cares.

Newbie (Marry My Dead Body's Gingle Wang) fails at everything while alive and is even worse off while dead, being absolutely hopeless in scaring anybody. When the last item memorialising her is accidentally discarded by her family, she has 30 days to prove herself and get a “Professional Haunting Licence” before she disintegrates into oblivion.

In comes can-do ghost talent agent and one-time pop idol Makoto (Chen Bolin in great comeback form) who pushes Newbie under the wing of the very reluctant, skeptical and jaded Catherine. “You didn’t die a gruesome death or make the news, you have no talent,” the veteran chides the new girl, seeing her as a lost cause.

She kicks the unmotivated Newbie right off the hotel roof to try to turn her into a spectacular suicide ghost to bedazzle paranormal investigators with viral cameras ready. Hilarious.

Here's the underworld built by Taiwanese horror-comedy, Dead Talents Society, and boy, is this a great feel-good-being-dead fun time. A pic about the lifeless that’s actually full of life.

Director and co-writer John Hsu's second feature — after 2019's serious horror flick, Detention — is enjoyable, smart, knowing and even touching as a fully sustained high concept from start to finish with likeable performances from some of Taiwan cinema's journey-folks.

Wang, a terrifically sad and poignant sad-sack, is a hot thing now. But you’re tickled especially by Chen and Pinna getting really meaty roles here, with the former poking fun at himself in, er, fine spirit. “I was too good-looking to be scary,” he reveals about his too-friendly afterlife aura.

Director Hsu is astute enough to know that the trick in featuring funny ghosts is to portray them as normal people. The living and the unseen mix together in the same scenes looking the same way. Including a tight little elevator pushing buttons in a natural-vs-supernatural competition.

But forget about unchained Beetlejuice-y wackiness. This is still a Taiwanese film. It’s not in a big hurry as it’s downright soulful despite being about the soulless. Right at its core, is a heartwarming tale about friendship, family, encouragement and our Asian paradoxical notion about not needing to feel like a loser to be a true winner.

Amid the “jump scares and killer moves” prescribed in the requisite spook manual here, any chiller fan will dig this show’s horror-movie references. From Taiwan's own The Tag-Along to Ring to Shutter to the most comical spook spoof about the ghost coming right at you in a hotel corridor, Dead Talents Soc­­­iety is one hell of a fun ride. (4/5 stars) in cinemas now

Photo: Sony Pictures Entertainment