The Tag-Along

I don't watch a lot of Asian horror films, mainly because I have never really been much of a fan of paranormal movies, and for the most part Asian horror films tend to focus on paranormal type things (mostly scary little kid ghosts). But the other night I was bored and in the mood for a horror film, I decided to not be picky at all and basically just randomly pick one of the newer releases from the genre. I stumbled onto a Taiwanese film called "The Tag Along" and honestly I am glad I did.

The film follows Zhi-wei He, a young adult who lives a fairly busy life trying to juggle his job, his girlfriend, and spending time with his grandmother who lives with him. Zhi-wei He's life is turned upside down when a little ghost girl in a red dress shows up and takes his grandmother away. From there things get pretty wild as the little ghost girl makes multiple appearances to terrorize Zhi-wei and the other people in his life.

Early on "The Tag Along" does a lot of things right, the characters are interesting and the story is set up well, plus there are a lot of very well done subtle scare scenes that did a good job of catching me off guard. Unfortunately as the film progresses it becomes more and more dependent on CGI and less on practical scares. At this point it was still entertaining, however the CGI caused the film to lose a lot of it's creepiness. There are actually quite a few scenes that had me giggling a bit due to the goofy effects.

I liked "The Tag Along", overall it was a pretty fun ghost story that was clever at times and didn't rely too much on the normal Ghost Movie clichés (even though there are quite a few present here). Without the CGI I feel like this could have been a lot better, but even with it the film is still entertaining and worth checking out.

6/10

Tag-Along is the first movie of a trilogy that is based on an urban legend. A little girl with a red dress haunt down people with regrets, by "kidnapping" them: basically she take over their mind and she make them go to a forest, where they'll be trapped. It is a pretty basic plot, pretty standard for a ghost story.

The movie has nice premises, compared to the average occidental horror movie has less jumps scares. The real problem with the movie is the CGI, extremely bad. Ghosts that appears are clearly fake, and instead being scary, they are actually funny to watch.

Actors were kinda okay, maybe Wei-Ning Hsu that portrayed the girlfriend of the main character, was a little bit better, but no one really stand out. Usually horror from Asia are better, but in this case I was very disappointed.

'The Tag-Along' takes a well-known urban legend in Taiwan and turns it into a bone-chilling mystery built around themes of loss, regret and familial love. Depending on your knowledge of Taiwanese folklore, you may or may not have heard of the 'little girl in red', who was infamously captured by a group of climbers on home video making their way along a mountain trail. That video was broadcast on television way back in 1988, and since then, others have reported similar sightings of a little girl in a red dress just before they had met with some form of calamity. Legend has it that the girl is a mountain demon known as 'mo-sien' (or 魔神仔 in Chinese), which preys on fear and guilt and is particularly drawn to children and the elderly.

So it is that the first to disappear in the film is an elderly woman who happens to be good friends with our lead male protagonist's grandma (Liu Yin–shang), a curmudgeonly lady confronted with the same fate one typical morning after making breakfast for her grandson Wei (River Huang). It will be a couple of days before Wei realises that she has gone missing – despite being his caretaker from young, Wei's busy work schedule as a real estate agent have kept the two apart in recent times, leaving his grandmother in constant lament about how little he sleeps every night and how little time he spends at home with her. Their estrangement is also in part due to Wei's relationship with his girlfriend Yi-chun (Hsu Wei Ning), who harbours no plans to get married, settle down or have kids even after five years, much to Wei's grandmother's dismay.

As you can expect, there is a lesson here on taking the ones who love us for granted – and as we learn through a series of flashbacks, Wei had made a promise to his grandmother when he was a kid that he would have dinner with her every night, even scribbling it on the underside of their dinner table. But it isn't just Wei who has a lesson to be learnt; midway through the film, Wei's grandmother is found walking lost and disoriented along a stretch of highway, right after Wei himself vanishes. Just as Wei had been taking his grandmother for granted, so has Yi-chun been doing likewise of Wei, and the second half of the film is as much about Yi-chun digging deeper into the legend of the 'mo-sien' as it is about her learning the depths of Wei's love for her.

If there is one thing that Jian Shi-geng's screenplay gets right, it is in establishing the relationships between Wei and his grandmother as well as between Wei and Yi-chun with careful attention and detail. Not only do we feel for Wei mourning the loss of his grandmother, we empathise with Yi-chun coping with the sudden departure of Wei, and within these two relationships, Jian makes keenly felt the regret we often face when the people who love us but whom we take for granted are abruptly taken away from us. The latter allows the climax set deep in a patch of dense forest to be both scary yet heartfelt, as Yi-chun resolves to save Wei from the clutches of the mountain demon that assumes the form of the 'little red girl'.

On his part, Cheng Wei-hao, who makes his feature filmmaking debut here, largely succeeds in sustaining a tense and uneasy atmosphere throughout the film. There are a couple of nicely earned 'jump' scares here, but what lingers is the sense of dread that he builds with the creaking of a door, the rustle of the wind and the voice of a little girl. Cheng loves to play with his audience's sense of focus, and an oft-used but nonetheless effective technique is how he teases us with something that we should be seeing on the periphery of the frame just before it jumps in our face. Just as well, Cheng hits the emotional beats of Jian's script nicely – in particular, an early sequence that shows Wei's grandmother trying to wake Wei up for work when his alarm rings and then preparing his breakfast and lunch box for him pays off subsequently in unexpectedly emotional ways.

No wonder then that 'The Tag-Along' has gone on to become the most successful horror movie in Taiwan in a decade – like the best of its genre, it isn't just a scattershot collection of scares but rather a poignant lesson on human nature that tugs on your heartstrings as much as it rattles your nerves. To be fair, it does owe its audience a couple of loose ends, and the CGI-heavy climax does border on overkill, but on the whole, Cheng's maiden entry to the horror genre is a spooky atmospheric affair that bears a foreboding omnipresence. At no point do you ever feel that its thrills are cheap or convenient, nor does it lose its emotional hook along the way, so if you're looking for a good scare, you'll find yourself in good company if you follow the little girl in red.

A story based on Taiwanese folklore of a spirit in the guise of a little girl in red. She tags along when she's haunting someone; she's always on the trail of guilt. Guilt is her first wave of torment. She comes for grandma which prompts all kinds of guilt from the grandson who has the normal feelings of love/resentment that families engender. The story forces the traditional a tad too much for me. The heroine is an incomplete person until she decides to marry and make babies. Still, it's an interesting glimpse into a different culture.

The Haunted, also known as The Tag-Along, is a highly entertaining Taiwanese horror movie. An elderly woman from a vast apartment complex has mysteriously disappeared and her worried best friend starts having strange visions and hearing weird noises. Soon after, the disappeared woman suddenly returns and is in a confused state of shock. She remembers being held captive in the mountains outside of Taipeh and pronouncing her best friend's name who has now also disappeared under strange circumstances. Her busy grandson and his fragile girlfriend start investigating with the help of an elderly security guard. They soon realize that numerous recent disappearances in the region are related to the ghost of a little girl living in the mountains. While they are getting closer to uncovering the truth, they start risking their own lives facing abominable witchcraft.

This overlooked movie convinces on numerous levels. First of all, it's one of the most important Taiwanese horror movies, starting a popular franchise and being the first of its kind to get limited international release. While this movie might seem like another ghost story at first sight, the movie incorporates numerous elements of Taiwanese culture that add a fresh perspective. The locations are perfectly chosen from desolate apartments over gloomy hospitals to foggy forests in the mountains. The round characters are intriguing and especially the difficult relationship between the ambitious son and his fearful girlfriend is cleverly developed throughout the movie. Being a horror movie, the film has an uneasy vibe right from the start and showcases a few unsettling moments while always favouring atmosphere over jump scare tropes. With a length of one hour and a half, the film doesn't overstay its welcome and remains dynamic from start to finish. The production values are above average as the movie makes the best out of a low budget.

I'm glad that I was able to pick up this movie along with its good but not as convincing sequel in a collective set for only seven bucks. However, this movie is worth much more than what I've paid for it and will certainly convince international horror movie enthusiasts. The combination of Taiwanese culture and a creepy ghost story adds something new to horror cinema and I can only encourage genre fans to give obscure international filmmakers a chance instead of only focusing on Hollywood reboots, remakes and sequels.