The Tag Along (2015) by Cheng Wei-hao

Director: Cheng Wei-hao
Year: 2015
Country: Taiwan
Alternate Titles: Hong yi xiao nu hai
Genre: Ghosts

Plot:
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.

Review:

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 border 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 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's 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. The main scares here are based solely around the sudden shock appearance of the creepy long-hair ghost jumping onto screen screaming loudly, which is quite common and doesn't really do much to help this. It's all too familiar with the overall design of the ghost and the CGI-heavy usage later on for the finale that's the main source of disappointment with the film. Taking on a wholly contrived concept of the ghost manipulating the surroundings in their own dream world controlled to torment her victim, this bloated CGI mess of a sequence ruins the great double-take moments before and turns the ending of the film into that over-used setup. With the film focused on thinking these elements drive the main fearful aspects instead of it's 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. Rather than really dig into that premise and utilize that aspect of the storyline with the ghost generating somewhat unusual encounters around the two, the film digs into an investigation subplot that goes nowhere. Going off the basis of the moth found at the site of one of the returned victims and attempting to dig into the history of the ghost sightings in the village should've been much more fun than it is since this middle section of the film grinds to a halt to showcase her going trough the various sightings with a lame dream encounter thrown into the mix. None of this ties into the ghost they're actually dealing with anyway, and with the downtime that produces does drag the film down. 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.

Overview: ***/5
With most of the positives based around the intriguing ghost at play here, most of the other issues at play don't really affect this one much beyond just being so overly familiar that it doesn't really stand out as much as it should. Give this a chance if you're into these kinds of Asian ghost stories or curious about the film's success, while those looking for more demanding fare or not as interested in that format should heed caution.

This review was originally written for Asian Movie Pulse and is gratefully reprinted with their cooperation.