Terrorizers is a film that excels because it’s so deeply structured. Its structure is more similar to that of modern television than film. The first sequence acting as a Teaser, then followed by multiple acts. This one with a coda or tag at the end. If this was a television pilot, this would be the catchup pilot, where the Teaser ends at a moment of impact, then you go back in time, and you catch back up to the Teaser in Act Four. These were huge back in the early 2000s have since fallen out of favour, probably due to overuse. When they are done well, they are very effective. Director Ho Wi Ding and his co-writer Natasha Sung did it well in Terrorizers.
The Teaser played as a falling in love sequence set to Chopin’s – Nocturne in E Flat Major (Op. 9 No. 2), but it came to a crashing end when a young man (Ming Liang played by Austin Lin) wielding a sword attacked the girl (Yu Fang played by Moon Lee) in a train station injuring the boy (Xiao Zhang played by JC Lin). Then the film shifts back in time. At first, it seems to be telling loosely connected but independent short films, the threads start to come together, forming a big knot. Only the viewers and Ming Liang are aware of the nature of all the connections as the others only see their threads, even after life-altering reveals.
I found the falling-in-love sequence between Yu Fang and Xiao Zhang in the Teaser overly sweet and all surface no substance. The later acts reveal that this framing was intentional so that when they showed backstory about Yu Fang and her emotional state before getting involved with Xiao Zhang you’d get what she needed from him at the time.
While I didn’t necessarily buy that practically every guy Monica (played by Annie Chen) met knew of her previous work as a cam-girl, the way they played up her insecurities about being taken seriously as an actor because of this was well done.
A thing that did stand out for me was the level of intensity in the relationships. While Ming Liang is established as an obsessive from the start, one that Yu Fang instinctively avoided in their shared home, he’s not the only one with intense emotions. Yu Fang fell for Monica hard and fast and was devasted by her leaving, though that was compounded by her father getting remarried, moving, and selling her childhood home. Xiao Zhang long carried a torch for Yu Fang but shortly after Monica leaves, Yu Fang falls in love and Chopin with Xiao Zhang. I don’t know if Terrorizers is trying to make a statement that young love is obsessive and those in it are not far from being the Ming Liang’s of the world, or if it was just a necessity to heighten to heighten the Teaser pull back.
Terrorizers was the first film I saw from Ho Wi Ding, who previously won the 2018 Platform Prize at TIFF for Cities of Last Things, but his name is now added to my list of filmmakers to track.
MAJOR PLOT SPOILER AHEAD, READ AT YOUR OWN discretion:
When they revealed Ming Liang not only recorded Yu Fang and Monica engaged in sexual activity, and posted it online but used it as justification for why he attacked Yu Fang, claiming it was because she stole his “girlfriend”. I was shocked; he was crazy. Then the news coverage seemed to sympathize with him, and I was less shocked. And Yu Fang’s own father didn’t seem to believe her, and even if he did, he wasn’t going to defend her because no one else believed her. So instead of standing by her, he encouraged her, the victim, to leave town. By that point, I wasn’t shocked at all. Because this is sadly a female reality. Yu Fang was victimized, recorded without her consent, attacked with a sword, then made to be the villain in the story by her abuser. Because she was a woman who behaved sexually. Because she acted on same-sex attraction. I was furious, not at the filmmakers, but at a world where this kind of story progression doesn’t shock me.
Premiered at TIFF.