The Heirloom            

Taiwan does horror too. Not nearly as well-known as other Asian horror from Japan and Korea, but they have had a few solid entries over the past twenty-years - Silk and Double Vision come to mind but there have been others as well. This one is in a sense a haunted house tale but deeply entrenched in Chinese culture and folk tales. It isn't particularly terrifying and has none of the jump scares that we are accustomed to in films like this - but instead it is almost a mood piece that slowly envelops the viewer in atmosphere and tragedy. Beautifully shot, haunting music and a house that most of us would not want to set foot in. It just screams out, stay out. But our protagonist James (Jason Chang) has returned from years abroad since childhood to find out that he has inherited an old huge manor that his family lived in for generations. It is dilapidated with peeling paint, leaks and creaks. He is an architect and so ignores the advice of the real estate person to sell and decides to move in and fix it. He persuades Yo (Teri Kwan), the woman he loves to move in with him.



It doesn't take long for the weirdness to begin to happen. They have their friends over - Yi-chen (Chang Chia-hui) and Tseng (Tender Huang) to see the house. Yo takes Yi-chen to explore the house and they go up to the attic where the family shrine is. Among the dust and cobwebs are hundreds of photos of the dead of previous generations. I may have seen some of you there. Yi-chen takes a photo and later when she develops it, she sees a woman hanging in it. That is the moment I would have been out of that house and never looked back. More strange events take place - their friends find themselves in the house late at night and they have no idea how they got there. They spot wet footprints in the house but only the two of them are there.. Yo says to James, maybe we should get out, to which he replies, well nothing has happened to us yet. People are always stupid in horror movies. That is a tradition. This couple follows that tradition.


Yo locates the aunt of James - in an insane asylum and the aunt tells her just how fucked up the house is. The family believed in the power of Hsiao Guei. The raising of child ghosts, dead fetuses by feeding them blood - the blood of the family. This gives the family power and success. But the aunt (Lu Yi-ching) says there is a price to be paid. What price? Look at where I am. Director Leste Chen relies too much on mood, atmosphere, a slow pace and the terrific sets - he needed to go commercial and throw in a few scares or gore to keep the audience on their heels. One other problem is that the performance of Jason Chang feels so distant and uninvolved that it is hard to believe in what follows - why does Yo stay there, why does she go up to the family shrine and look for the urns of dead babies on her own. Why does she love him.

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