I’ll start with a caveat: because I haven’t seen Edward Yang’s 1986 film of the same name, I feel like I’m perhaps at a slight disadvantage when discussing director Wi Ding Ho’s effort, Terrorizers. Yang was a seminal voice in the Taiwanese New Wave, so it’s little surprise Ho holds his work in high regard. Although this film is not a remake, watching Ho’s Terrorizers, even if you’re passingly familiar with Yang’s work, it’s easy to pick up the tribute that Ho has crafted with his sprawling narrative.
This new Terrorizers has a large, but not overwhelming, ensemble cast, focusing on six teenagers in Taipei. It unfolds in chapters, each focusing on a specific character’s point of view, in turn recontextualizing our understanding of events. It’s a fascinating exercise in audience immersion. In all, a riveting experience and the best film I’ve seen at TIFF so far.
It’s better to go in cold, so here’s the briefest of brief rundowns on the plot: Ming Liang (Austin Lin) and Yu Fang (Moon Lee) have a challenged relationship while living in the same house. Ming is the product of wealth and obsessed with video games, while Yu is an aspiring stage actress and the daughter of a budding politician. While working at a coffee shop, Yu crosses paths with an old acquaintance, Xiao Zhang (JC Lin), and they begin a relationship. One night at the train station together, while Xiao is shopping, Yu is attacked by a slasher dressed in ninja attire and armed with a katana.
This incident becomes the incitement by which the entire plot of Terrorizers centers, builds towards, and reverberates from, in multiple ways. Its detours involve pornography, cosplay, delusions, unexpected romantic entanglements, and the ease by which the wealthy are able to turn the tides of public opinion against those with less. Terrorizers presents its story at face value in the film’s first 30 minutes, but with each passing chapter, Ho adds new wrinkles, angles, and themes to that narrative to totally upend expectations and create new ones. It’s also functionally the most beautifully shot film of the festival thus far, with Ho highlighting Taipei’s nightlife in a way that glows off the screen, while the prodigious use of Chopin’s Nocturne No 2 in E-Flat Major underscores the growing sense of tragedy that brings these core players together.
The cast is also, with no exception, enthralling. Lin may very well have given the performance of the festival, breathing untold life into Ming Liang, both a pathetic incel, but also a terrifying figure capable of incredible damage. Lee perfectly embodies the visage of a young woman whose prevailing sadness overrides any advantages in life that have been offered her. And Annie Chen, as a struggling actress within Yu’s troupe that is beset by financial hardships, and Lin, is the closest source of stability to be found within this core group, add vivid textures that paint the larger canvas that Ho has developed.
Though I heard little about Terrorizers going into the Toronto International Film Festival and haven’t seen it get nearly the same level of attention as your Power of the Dog or Dune type of flicks, it might be the surprise hit of the event, for me. Here’s to hoping everyone catches on and it’s released widely, and soon.