Spirit on Wheels centres on two protagonists; the main character Dahua (Ix Shen) is haunted by a woman (Jacelyn Tay) who met an untimely end from a bout of unrequited love. This woman almost always appears in close proximity to the taxicab for reasons one will discover by the end of the film.
In no circumstance was I expecting Mediacorp (or more specifically, its predecessor Television Corporation of Singapore) to produce and direct a horror film on our waters (no pun intended). Compared to our neighbours, Malaysia and Indonesia, I unfortunately struggle to name local horror movies that have captured our cultural zeitgeist, so seeing this was extremely refreshing.
The opening scene itself is wonderfully constructed. It does a unique spin on the iconic car swamp scenes from
Psycho (1960). While Hitchcock’s image is more polished and controlled, director Sampson Yuen’s shots have striking, dramatic and clearly fantastical lighting. His editing is fast-paced and more symbolic. For example, the change in depth of focus between the fishing rods and the car gives the impression that they spontaneously begin reeling the car out of the water.
My strongest impression, though, was the campiness! What do I mean by this? I think cultural critic Susan Sontag defines it best as “love of the unnatural: of artifice and exaggeration”¹. For example, while in the end credits of
Psycho, a pulley slowly draws the car out of the swamp, in this movie, the same kind of scene is reworked by Yuen. He uses lighting, practical effects, and editing in this scene that exaggerate the emotion and intensity past the basic implication. These elements also remind the audience that they are watching a film, a product of deliberate camera positions, strategically placed lights and the cutting together of images to create new associations and meanings.
Sontag goes on to say, “The pure examples of camp are unintentional; they are dead serious”². Part of what makes this film so enjoyable and even more campy is that I can sense the genuine honesty of the artifice – it is perfectly natural with respect to the plot, the background of the director, and the economics of the film.
Plot-wise, there is a consistency to how the horror and drama are separated temporally in the film. Daytime consists of domestic scenes where Dahua and his fiancée discuss their relationship as she desires to get married. This is shot and edited in a ‘standard’ way. When night rolls in, the filmic language shifts gears, and we can consistently see new and refreshing ways that the director makes use of the haunted taxicab and lonely ghost motifs. A lot of thought is put into balancing between convention and novelty in the film's aesthetics.
Secondly, the aesthetic of this film is very in line with Hong Kong supernatural horror films. I was most reminded of
Mr. Vampire (1985)
when watching this movie. This makes sense, for Yuen began his career in the Hong Kong TV industry, and Singapore TV always had a lot of collaboration with the Hong Kong media industry. The similarities do not end with the aesthetics and special effects, because Spirit on Wheels has plenty of slapstick comedy. One of my favourite scenes in the film has Dahua being flung around ridiculously as a joss paper taxicab floats across his bedroom window.
