by Anthony O'Connor
Worth: $13.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Intro:
… for all its flaws and nuance lost in translation, The Corpse 2 is an engaging and stylish flick.
It’s always interesting watching horror movies from other countries and seeing the different cultural touchstones used in the narrative. For instance, if you watch a mainstream American horror flick from the last decade or two, chances are, at some point a priest or churchy type will start reading from the Bible and hurling crucifixes at the antagonistic demon. In 2019’s The Vigil, aspects of Judaism were incorporated into both the lore of the evil being and the way that it’s dispatched. In The Corpse 2 (quỷ nhập tràng 2), the Vietnamese spookshow currently haunting up a storm at the overseas box office, handfuls of rice are utilised to keep the evil away and, presumably, slightly delicious. This kind of cultural learning is genuinely the best aspect of The Corpse 2, because the film itself, while entertaining, falls into a lot of the tropey traps of western genre cinema.
The Corpse 2 is actually a prequel to The Corpse (2025), telling the story of Minh Như (Khả Như), a young woman who has been exiled from her family by her stern father, Ông Hoàng (Đào Anh Tuấn). However, when Minh Như’s little sister Mỹ Ngọc (Ngọc Hương) gets sick and starts exhibiting symptoms of either mental illness or supernatural possession (or perhaps both), our hero heads back to her family’s sprawling dyeing workshop to see if she can help. The results are not what anyone expects, and things get nasty.
There’s a lot to like about The Corpse 2. The setting is unique and vividly shot, the horror moments (when they eventually arrive) are well-executed, and the story, when it finally reveals itself, is as twisty and tragic as one might hope. Had this been a 90-minute movie, your humble scribe would be hailing it as a classic. However, The Corpse 2 is 2+ hours long and it absolutely does not earn that lengthy span of time. Slow to start and then startlingly repetitive, this is a film that needed serious snipping to emphasise what’s good. The film’s best feature is absolutely the performance from Khả Như, who gives the role an understated gravitas and tragedy that really works for the character. It is a little difficult at times to parse exactly what she’s saying, mind you, because the subtitles bear a rather loose and distant relationship to the English language.
Still, for all its flaws and nuance lost in translation, The Corpse 2 is an engaging and stylish flick. Director Pom Nguyen clearly knows how to stage a genre yarn, and the frenetic energy, wirework assisted stunts and gloopy gore is sure to delight horror fans keen to expand their repertoire into the realm of international frights. It won’t change your life, mind you, but nor will you feel the need to fang a bowl of rice at the screen.
