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Contemporary Taiwanese Horror Cinema investigates the resurgence of horror and ghost films in Taiwan’s vibrant cinematic landscape. By analyzing a range of works, from postmodern horror comedies to art-house meditations, the book reveals how ghostly motifs serve as powerful metaphors for identity, historical trauma, and cultural renewal. Bridging traditional folklore with the digital age, Taiwanese filmmakers explore issues of memory, spirituality, and societal transformation, responding to both local and global shifts. Through a multidisciplinary lens combining film studies, cultural history, and media theory, this book offers a fresh and comprehensive examination of contemporary Taiwanese cinema. It highlights the dialogue between genre cinema and art-house aesthetics, and situates Taiwan’s “ghost island” narratives within broader conversations on globalization, queer representation, and cinematic innovation. Accessible and richly documented, Contemporary Taiwanese Horror Cinema addresses scholars, students, and cinephiles interested in Asian cinema, horror studies, and cultural identity.
Corrado Neri’s book is an original, rich, and timely contribution to Taiwan film studies. It bridges theoretical sophistication with cinephile enthusiasm, offering an innovative framework for understanding ghost cinema in Taiwan — Wafa Ghermani, National Central University
"Taiwanese Horror Cinema in the 21st Century moves beyond the established New Cinema canon to map a new and commercially vital field. Corrado Neri offers a compelling and original contribution, arguing that the Taiwanese horror is not merely an industrial trend but a crucial cultural space for negotiating the island’s most pressing concerns around such topics as unresolved historical traumas and queer identity. With impressive theoretical grounding in films ranging from mainstream hits like Incantation to experimental works like The Ghost of the Dark Path, this book will immediately become a valuable source for anyone writing about post-2000s Taiwanese genre film" —Chia-rong Wu, Associate Professor (Reader), Coordinator of the Chinese and Sinophone Studies Programme, School of Language, Social & Political Sciences, Toi Tangata
"The proliferation of supernatural and horror films has been a major feature of twenty-first century Taiwanese cinema. This wide-ranging exploration of the island’s onscreen ghosts, spirits, and demons makes a compelling case for their cultural significance, illuminating our understanding of recent trends. Driven by a cinephile passion, Neri astutely analyses how haunting, as a concept, has enabled filmmakers to contribute to diverse discourses around digital mediation, historical trauma, and queer identity." —Christopher Brown, University of Sussex, UK
"Infectiously enthusiastic and analytically sharp, Corrado Neri’s monograph dives into the ocean of contemporary Taiwanese horror movies to show how the most modern and scientific of societies is simultaneously haunted by restless spirits and wandering phantoms of multiple past colonisations, martial law, and troubling future prospects." —Chris Berry, King's College London.
"Distinguished Taiwan cinema scholar Corrado Neri presents us with a pithy and incisive introduction to Taiwanese horror film, illustrating that the genre theme so well instantiated in such films as Dead Talent Society, The Rope Curse, The Tag-Along, Detention, and Marry My Dead Body, among others, has seeped into mainstream cinema, contributing to a “new cinephilia” that broadens the aperture for what constitutes “serious” film in Taiwan. Informed and sophisticated, Taiwanese Horror Cinema in the 21st Century: Spectral Narratives and Screen Culture intervenes in discussions pertaining to politics, gender identity, historical trauma, traditional “Chinese” and Confucian values, indigeneity, comedy, architecture, and family relations to offer us a fresh and informed discussion of what narrowly has been described as genre film. Neri’s expansive analysis moves us beyond the auteur-dominated Taiwan film industry of the previous thirty years into a new era of genre-bending classics." —Christopher Lupke, Professor of Chinese Cultural Studies, Department of East Asian Studies, Uniiversity of Alberta, Canada
"Rarely discussed, horror films have been one of the most important genres in Taiwanese cinema. Corrado Neri’s Taiwanese Horror Cinema in the 21st Century offers a timely, comprehensive overview of its norms, traditions, and anxieties in all the connotations of the nation’s “ghostliness,” a capacious and yet precise figure for bridging both popular and art house films across the spectrum. This book will be essential for anyone interested in broadening the canon of Taiwanese film history and rediscovering its scary vitality in genre adventures." —Chang-min Yu, Associate Professor, National Taiwan University, Taiwan
Corrado Neri is the Director of the CEFC (French Centre for Research on Contemporary China) and Professor at Jean Moulin University Lyon 3.
Contents; Introduction; 1. The Self-Autopsy: Auto-Referential Dead; 2. Rural Gothic and the Digital Age; 3. Political Ghosts; 4. Queer Teen Spirits; 5. Elevated Horror; Filmography; Bibliography; Index