Note: This article has serious spoilers.
Although the number of domestic dramas exceeds 300 and the number of episodes exceeds 10,000 each year, in general, the types of domestic dramas are not rich enough, such as high-quality dramas with horror/thriller themes. , Really rare. There are certainly reasons for the tightening of censorship of
, but the crux lies in the laziness and perfunctory of the creators. Compared with drama series, the number of domestic horror movies is more, but in the public's impression, domestic horror movies have formed several fixed labels: the story is sparse, imaginative, and crude. On Douban, 2-4 points for domestic horror films have become the norm.
Therefore, when a domestically produced thriller mini-series called "No Thoughts: A Dictionary" was slowly fermenting on the Internet in 2017, you can understand the surprises of some audiences-it was encouraged by some audiences to praise it as a "mini version" "Wonderful Stories of the World"", "Several poor ghosts finished domestic horror films" In March 2019, the team launched a mini-series "No Thoughts: Radio"; on November 26, the latest "No Thoughts: Video" was broadcast at station B, and it has now ended.
"No Thoughts: Video" poster
"No Thoughts: Dictionary"
"No Thoughts of Difference" series slogan is "the world's strange things, brainstorming", are all mini-unit dramas, all of the same creative team: Director Ou Dingding, screenwriter Yang Xiaoyi and O Dingding. The post-90s director Odinding is a thriller fan. In 2015, he had the idea of filming "No Thinking". In 2017, he finally found investors, and this was the result of "No Thinking: A Dictionary".
"No Thoughts: Dictionary" poster
"No Thoughts: Dictionary" has 26 episodes, each episode is about 3-4 minutes, very mini, the overall style tends to be horrible. Although the duration is short, the themes of "No Thoughts: A Dictionary" are quite rich, with urban strange stories, horror anecdotes, supernatural phenomena, and science fiction... The capture and assembly of some horror thoughts that flashed in our minds in our daily life shocked the audience instantly.
such as "Painting". The male protagonist was painting and drew an apple. There was a strange noise in the cabinet. He opened it and saw that the apple in the painting appeared in the cabinet; he drew a RMB, and the RMB appeared in the cabinet; he drew a stack Renminbi, a wad of Renminbi appeared in the cabinet; the male protagonist wanted to draw a beautiful woman with his color and heart, and only painted the body of the beautiful woman. At this time, the doorbell rang, and the male lead opened the door. After turning around, there was something out of the cabinet. Just one hand...
Another example is "Pre-marital Checkup". The male lead and female lead prepare to register their marriage and do pre-marital inspections. The hospital has a new project called loyalty check, which is presented through a polygraph. Lying is a red light, and the truth is a green light. Through a few questions, we learned that the male protagonist had a twin brother who sexually assaulted the female protagonist, but then the male protagonist’s brother died in a car accident. The female protagonist said that it was deserved. After passing all the examinations, the doctor finally confirmed the names of the two, and when the male lead answered "yes", the red light was on.
The red light is on, the male lead lied, is he the older brother or younger brother?
"No Thinking: The Dictionary" is very good at grasping the audience's psychology. It stops abruptly at the most terrifying point, but it brings the audience a sense of unfulfilled thoughts and extreme fear, which can effectively compensate for the lack of information and aftertaste in the mini-series The disadvantages of insufficient. Of course, "No Thinking: A Dictionary" is far from perfect. The 26 short stories are mixed, and many of them remain on the old stalk of "Female Ghosts Turning Back and Killing", repeating them repeatedly and slightly boring.
"No Thinking: A Dictionary" still received support and encouragement from most of the audience. Because the creators are poor, but each short story has a complete narrative logic, and the audiovisual language is also striving to improve, the audience can feel the creator's serious attitude.
"No Thoughts: Radio"
just, "No Thoughts: Dictionary" became popular on a small scale, and it didn't make the team rich. Originally planned to be launched in the second half of 2018, "No Thoughts: Radio" was difficult to give birth, did not attract investment, crowdfunding aborted, and the launch time was delayed. On March 15, 2019, the mini-unit drama "Love, Death, Robot" produced by Netflix was officially launched and became a global hit, which invisibly drove the audience's attention to the "Fantastic" series. On March 25th, "No Thinking: Radio" got more attention due to the craze. Many films and televisions became tap water from the media, and the "No Thinking" brand went out of the circle a little.
"No Thinking: Radio" poster
"NoSi Yi: Radio has only 12 episodes, but the duration has doubled compared to "Si Yi: A Dictionary", each episode is about 8 minutes. According to the screenwriter Yang Xiaoyi, the 3-minute "No Thoughts: Dictionary" is like a brain teaser, and the 8-minute "No Thoughts: Radio" is like a short story.
Indeed, compared with "No Thinking: Dictionary", "No Thinking: Radio" has a visual improvement in narrative, with a more complete plot, richer audiovisual language, and deeper content; the horror is weakened, but The psychological level of horror has increased.
such as "Life Modifier". Male protagonists often encounter campus bullying. When he was bullied once, he ran away and found a life-changing modifier. There are 5 attributes on the modifier: strength, agility, intelligence, charm, and luck. Each attribute has 3 points, a total of 15 points. You can add and modify at will, but you can only modify it once a day. The male protagonist increased his strength and defeated the bully. After that, he changed his attributes as he pleased according to the situation. The male lead
picked up a life modifier
and had an exam. He adjusted his intelligence to 15 points and completed the exam easily. But when applying the answer sheet, the pencil broke repeatedly, and no classmate was willing to lend him the pen. Only then did he realize that his charm and luck were all zero points. When the bully came to bully him again, he was unable to resist because his strength was also 0. The rich and handsome Xueba in the class came to help him, and he escaped. The
male protagonist suddenly realized that there are no gold fingers in this world. Rather than making opportunities, it is better to be a down-to-earth person. The male lead was about to restore the factory settings of the life modifier. He looked up and found that every student in the class has such a modifier, but their points add up to less than 15.
Everyone has a life modifier, but the total number of points is less than 15
when he was wondering, Gao Fushuai Xueba came over, his 5 attribute points are much higher than anyone. Gao Fushuai whispered in the ear of the male lead, "One hundred thousand yuan, buy you a point." Many of the previous small details are also connected together. For example, a bullied person was ridiculed by his classmates, "Aren't you smart before?" It turned out that the classmates had sold their points. The reversal of
"Life Modifier" was unexpected.
"Life Modifier" took less than 7 minutes, and realized multiple reversals from science fiction to chicken soup to social criticism. And the ending point is indeed of practical significance. For example, how many scientific and technological advancements of mankind claim to serve all mankind, but are ultimately monopolized by the wealthy class?
Like "No Thinking: A Dictionary", "No Thinking: Radio" is also diverse in themes and styles. "Looking for the Hermit" is the most unique and charming short story in "No Thinking: Radio".
The originality of "Lan Ke Shan" is based on ancient Chinese folklore. In the "Shui Jing Zhu" written by Li Daoyuan of the Northern Wei Dynasty, it is said that in the Jin Dynasty, a woodcutter named Wang Zhi went to Shishishan to chop wood. Seeing the two boys playing Go, he sat aside and watched. The game was not over, the boy said to him, your axe is rotten. When Wang Qiao returned to the village, he realized that decades had passed.
In "The Recluse Seeker, Not Encountered", in the ancient background, the woodcutter went into the mountains to chop wood and got lost halfway. Seeing the wild cottage from a distance, the woodcutter had never heard of anyone living here. He walked into the room, the room was clean, the joss sticks were not burned out, and the pen and ink on the wall were literary. The woodcutter did not wait for the master, and then left.
"The Recluse Seeker" adopts a black style of painting, with classical Chinese narration, quite ancient and poetic. Burning out means not seeing the master. The next day, the woodcutter visited the wild house three times, but still did not see his master, but there was a turtle on the table. Two days later, the woodsman went to Yelu again, he lit a stick of incense, and took a nap on the flat table in the house.
The woodcutter woke up and left. He walked to the top of the mountain and looked down. He was shocked. The bottom of the mountain was full of modern high-rise buildings. This nap in his house was already a thousand years later.
"Looking for the Hermit" completely adopts the dialogue and voiceover in classical Chinese, and uses 4:3 format and Kurosawa Akira's black and white images. The overall style is quite "Peach Blossom Spring", with ancient, poetic and Zen meaning. When the woodcutter woke up, he looked down from the top of the mountain, and the picture was slowly unfolding like a scroll, the color also changed to color, and the narration was saying, "I only know that in this mountain, the clouds are deep and unknown." This is really interesting. Called exquisite. The
frame slowly unfolds, and the colors under the mountain are alsoChange from black and white to color
"No Thoughts: Video"
This time "No Thoughts: Video" is still a unit drama, and the unit drama has a relatively unified framework. The title of each episode is part of the human body. Names, such as "Body", "Nail", "Eye Pupil", "Brain", etc. However, its style has changed greatly from the previous two films. "No Thoughts: Video" is all shot in the form of a pseudo-documentary. Each unit drama of
has the same beginning. The protagonist walks into a studio and begins to tell his story to the camera. In the 11 episodes that have been updated so far, apart from the 10th episode "Brain" which is a warm family story, the rest of the episodes have "dead people", and the narrator is the suspect. Their narrations have one thing in common, they try to distinguish themselves as the murderer.
The different unit dramas of "Unthinking: Video" have a relatively uniform format.
is an objective video recording in the studio on the one hand, and on the other hand is interspersed with subjective memories under the subjective lens. The main content of each story is a picture taken by the party concerned with video. Therefore, in the form of expression, they are all shaking and fuzzy hand-held photography to highlight subjectivity and authenticity. The main content of the different stories of
is the video
held by the person concerned, so there are at least two levels of horror in "No Thinking: Video". One level is the content of the subjective video record, and the other level is how the narrator distinguishes himself in the studio. The more flaws and contradictions between the two, the more complicated and confusing the incident, which also reflects the more complicated human nature.
For example, in the second episode of "The Body", the hero tells the story of the collective disappearance of several of his best friends. In the subjective video recording part, the male protagonist had a party with several of his best friends. One of the boys, Liang Xiao, was late, and the other boy, Hao Wei, talked about Liang Xiao’s gossip. A man confessed to Liang Xiao two days ago. After chatting for a while, the male lead left to go to the bathroom. Hao Wei proposed to hide and scare the hero by pretending to go home but not. The male lead came out of the bathroom, thinking that his best friend was gone, he opened the box in the living room and walked into the house. The buddies also sneaked out and glanced at the box, where Liang Xiao's body was hidden. At this time, the male lead also came out of the house, and the buddies turned around and stared at the male lead. The
lens switched to the male protagonist's narration in the studio. His rhetoric was that the buddies just disappeared.
Episode 6 "Eye Pupil" is even more confusing. The protagonist found a beauty in the subway, followed her every day and secretly videotaped her. One day, the beauty found that the male protagonist was photographing him secretly, so she got off the subway, and since then, the male protagonist has never met the beauty again. The next day, he found in the subway car that a middle-aged uncle was wearing the red high heels worn by beautiful women. The male lead reminded the audience in the studio to "watch it again." It turns out that the middle-aged uncle is in every beauty video that the male protagonist secretly shot.
The male protagonist candidly photographed every video clip about beautiful women, there is a middle-aged uncle. After the beauty disappeared, the middle-aged uncle wore beautiful red high heels
, the audience's first reaction was that this middle-aged uncle was a perverted murderer. But wait a minute, thinking that all this is the story of the male lead, is it possible for him to lie? The disappearance of the beauty may also be caused by the male protagonist. In his story, he "fictionalized" a middle-aged uncle and "fixed" him.
Currently, the score of "No Thoughts: Video" on Station B is 9 (the number of people at station B is small, and it is always falsely high), which is lower than the 9.2 points of "No Thoughts: Dictionary" and "No Thoughts: Radio Station" 9.5 points. The scoring order of the three works is consistent with the author's perception. From a holistic perspective, "No Thinking: Video" is more coherent and unified, but is this unification necessary? Is the style of pseudo-documentary suitable for each unit drama? For example, most of them are hand-held photography, which is not so pleasant visually. The story like "Outside and Inside" in episode 5 makes people dizzy. More importantly, will
cause the problem of form greater than content? The style of pseudo-documentary puts a lot of restrictions on screenwriters. Some episodes give people the impression that there is no content and too little information. The director just makes up a story by the director, which feels flimsy. Like the 7th episode "Tongue" and the 9th episode "Atrium", they are too simple. "No Thoughts: Radio" has proved the team's ability to tell in-depth stories, but "No Thoughts: Video" was held back by an unnecessary form, and the story level has regressed.
As far as "No Thinking: Video" is concerned, the creationThe team dares to step out of the comfort zone and has the courage and determination to seek innovation and change, which deserves encouragement. It’s just for mini-style thriller dramas, whether the story is scary, attractive, and moral, is the core, otherwise, no matter how many tricks, it’s all about embroidering. In the field of domestic horror film and television dramas, it is hard to find a brand of "No Thinking" that you can watch, and the team must cherish it.
