Fruit Chan’s horror comedy Coffin Homes is a wild and relentless satire on Hong Kong’s real estate market madness – a subject the director knows a surprisingly great deal about
- Chan explains how his vision of making a more humanistic feature turned into a horror movie whose gruesome cartoonish violence earned it a Category III rating
- Despite the film’s mocking of Hong Kong’s property-market frenzies, Chan argues that his approach is more ironic than critical
Fruit Chan Gor may have been directing movies since the 1990s but somehow he has never made a single one that opened in Hong Kong cinemas during the peak summer season – until now. That unlikely milestone is the very first thing he pointed out when we met up for this interview. “Is this my first step of figuring out marketing?” he asks rhetorically and starts laughing.
It is a bit of an unusual claim from the filmmaker of modern classics such as Made in Hong Kong (1997) and Durian Durian (2000).
“None of my past films were picked to open during summer,” he says. “You know, my films are a bit on the eccentric side, and I seldom make mainstream movies – except maybe Invincible Dragon? Or does The Midnight After count? That one was another weird movie in spite of its mainstream cast – but it still opened in April. Coffin Homes, by comparison, is officially a summer movie.”
Chan’s latest film is a horror comedy that relentlessly makes fun of Hong Kong’s property-market frenzies while indulging in the most excessive displays of cartoonish violence – so much so that the film has been given a Category III rating for its local cinema release, meaning people under the age of 18 cannot be admitted to see it.
Long-time admirers of Chan’s socially aware oeuvre would not be surprised to hear that it has always been his wish to make a satirical film about Hong Kong’s housing problems. Indeed, another of Chan’s finished-but-as-yet-unreleased projects, The Abortionist, also touches upon the issue; that film, which is based on a true story, sees a teenager ask her mother to sign her apartment over to her.
