Image Source: https://www.netflix.com/
Recently I saw this film, The Bridge Curse, which was released on 27th August 2020 in Taiwan, China. The film is in Mandarin with English subtitles available on Netflix. I have been always fond of two things, legends and horror and this movie unify both of them.
The Story Explanation (Contains Spoilers)-
The movie is based on a legend of a girl jumping to her death from a bridge on a college campus in Taiwan. The story says that she went up to the bridge ready to elope with her lover, who didn’t come and this led the girl to commit suicide since then she has been haunting the bridge killing anyone who visits there at night. The kills follow a weird tradition of going up 13 steps. There on the top every midnight a 14th step appears and anyone who counts the steps and turns their head back becomes the next victim. This happens every four years, in a leap year.
The movie shows 4 consecutive timelines, 1990, 2012, 2016, 2020. But at the start, two timelines are depicted majorly 2016 and 2020. In 2016, 6 students from the university decided to check out the truth in the legend and set up what they call a “courage test.” In the night while executing the test, they challenge one of their friends to go up the stairs and then come back, but while doing so apparently he starts counting the steps and after the 14th step he disappears. This makes the others paranoid and they run up forgetting the one rule of not looking back. Just then the chair where the first friend was seating starts moving on its own, hinting that the paranormal activity has started and the group rushes back to their dormitory. Two of them, a couple go around the campus to search for their missing friend, where the guy tells his girl the real story which was completely different from the original one. He says the girl went up there to wait for her lover but as soon as she reached the last step she was pulled into the jungle by 5 men and was gang-raped, after which her body was thrown in the river below, to set it up like a suicide. Now that we understood why the spirit is so benevolent, the scene continues showing every student in the group getting killed one by one, including the first friend who was to carry out the ritual but pranked the others by hiding behind a bush, on the top of the steps.
In the 2020 timeline, a journalist is researching the incidents and trying to dig up the truth, when she suddenly realizes that there were 6 students, which makes her question what happened to the sixth one. After this, the timeline jumps back to top 2016, where the spirit seemed to have possessed a girl who was present in the 2012 ritual, and in the end, she made a deal with evil to get five students the next leap year which was 2016. The guy from the former couple makes the same deal and survives, becoming the mysterious sixth student.
After discovering a group photo in 2020, the journalist recognizes the sixth student from a mirror reflection as her camera person. Which even I doubted because in the full movie everyone’s face was shown except the cameraperson’s. The movie ends with the guy having manipulated five people to carry out the ritual, depicting that the same thing is going to happen again, as the guy says “five people must die.”
The Review-
According to me, the movie was a good watch. The jump scares and the melancholy is used in just adequate amounts enough to hook the audience to the screen. The cast acted very well, showing real expressions, and are maximum time shown in a recording frame, which is going to make you question whether it is a movie or true footage. The screen transition times were accurate and smooth. You can watch the movie on moderate screen brightness since it doesn’t have too many dark spots. Out of 10, I rate this movie a solid 8, keeping in mind the unexpected twists in the end.
All in all, this movie will be a treat for horror enthusiasts and people who love legends. I tried searching up more facts about this bridge legend and I found out that it indeed is a true story and the bridge is in the campus of Tunghai University (THU) of Taiwan. But I did not get much information, only one which shows the silhouette of an eerie figure in live footage of a student to wanted to check the story out. To me things like these are left alone for a reason and we should respect that, but in case any of you want to go and check out, then I am no one to stop. If you come back alive, let me know what happened???
Image source: https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/3844955