Hong yi xiao nu hai

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.

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

Attempting to move on his life, an ambitious real-estate agent and his girlfriend find their relationship struggles interrupted by the disappearance of his grandmother, but once he goes missing as well she finds a potential cause to be the legend of a local ghost coming after them.

This ends up being quite a decent if flawed effort. One of the brightest aspects here is the rather intriguing storyline that utilizes a wholly effective rationale for the ghost haunting. Tackling a popular and chilling local legend that's built into the local folklore and tells a rather interesting concept for a ghost film. A mischievous being that preys on guilt and regret, especially with children and the elderly, there's potentially a lot to really get into with the concept of a ghost following a person around to torment them for their feelings of guilt in their lives. This is particularly evident in the fact that the central relationships present in the film that borders on their regrets in life, from failing to keep childhood promises to their lack of understanding the romantic feelings that pop up in their romantic side. Once this early setup is accomplished, the later series of jump scares and ghostly interactions becomes all the more intriguing. Directly aping the original legend with the video footage of the girl in the red dress following a group of unknowing hikers in the mountains, these scenes come off nicely mixing together some rather traditional elements with the folklore trappings. These early scenes of the ghost influencing their dreams as they both end up getting their own dream-like encounter with the ghost popping up out of nowhere to generate scares or the stand-out hallucination of him supposedly eating bugs and worms instead of a regular meal. These are accomplished in conjunction with the creepy-looking ghost itself that looks quite chilling and really helps to sell some of the scares in the scares, especially evident in the scares of it crawling around on the floor chasing after them. There are later scenes in the jungle searching for everyone that manages to generate some reasonable suspense with the frantic search based on the earlier knowledge of their interactions with the ghost and the creepy setting is put to good use as well with these frantic scenes. Overall, these are what really hold this one up. There are some problems with this one. The main issue here is the overly familiar feeling that runs throughout the film, mostly centered on the overloaded sense of stylistic choices taken from other films. With the film focused on thinking these elements drive the main fearful aspects instead of its generally captivating storyline, there's a somewhat bland feeling that can emerge at times. As well, the other big issue here is the rather weak story that tends to be more confusing than anything. This one offers up a wholly intriguing storyline about a young ghost girl that can foreshadow strange incidents and calamities afterward, yet really doesn't do much with it. In the end, this relies more on an intriguing premise more than actually having anything with this ghost and just causes some confusion as for why include that backstory in the first place. These are what hold it down the most.

Rated Unrated/R: Violence and Language.

Different kind of ... well not the one where you do not text your friends for sure. Well former friends that is of course. No this is about "real" ghosts that you wouldn't mind getting rid of. Interesting and intriguing premise that is set up right from the beginning, where we get an explanation for those beings. And their purpose if you want to call it that.

That being said, the rest of the movie is quite predictable, as a few nice jump scares here and there and has a nice overall mood. But does nothing to really get your juices flowing. At least in my humble opinion. Not a bad movie either of course.

When I found "The Tag-Along" I was quite interested in getting a chance to watch it and did rush at the chance to do so. I must admit that I did have some expectations to the movie.

However, these expectations were not really met. And the movie just never really managed to impress me. Sure, it was an entertaining enough movie for what it turned out to be. But the movie just failed to be scary, or actually be interesting enough to make a lasting mark. Or perhaps I am just too hardened and seasoned of a decades of watching horror movies...

Regardless, this movie just wasn't particularly scary, and I doubt that even to Asians this is not overly scary. Unless you live in Taiwan, perhaps, and is familiar with the urban legend of the little girl in the red dress.

It should be said that the acting in the movie was quite good, and it was nice to see new faces on the screen. The actors and actresses were actually doing quite good jobs with their given roles and characters, just a shame that they had only so much to work with in terms of script and story.

There were very little special effects in the movie, and that is perhaps also a major part of why the movie just failed to latch on and hang on. It was a shame, because effects are usually crucial to horror movies, and very few of them manage to pull off having little or no special effects whatsoever. "The Tag-Along" failed at its attempt with whatever little special effects were present.

I managed to sit through the entire movie, because I wanted to see it to the end. And I just learned now that there is a sequel to "The Tag-Along" here in 2017. I can't really claim that such news are overly thrilling, since the first movie wasn't particular much of an outstanding movie in any way.

For an Asian horror movie, then "The Tag-Along" differentiates itself from the mainstream horror movies that is often seen in the Asian horror genre. However, it just wasn't unique enough to stand on its own and be particularly impressive. This wasn't a bad movie either, don't get me wrong, and it is actually watchable for sure.

The end result of how this movie turned out was, for me at least, mediocre, and I am rating the movie a mere 5 out of 10 stars.