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Review | Dead Talents Society movie review: Gingle Wang in hilarious Taiwanese supernatural comedy
- Gingle Wang plays a recently deceased woman trying to make it in the afterlife in this lighthearted screwball comedy from John Hsu
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![Gingle Wang as The Rookie in a still from Dead Talents Society (category IIB, Mandarin) directed by John Hsu. Chen Bo-lin and Sandrine Pinna co-star.](https://cdn.i-scmp.com/sites/default/files/styles/1020x680/public/d8/images/canvas/2024/08/12/2c26eb28-b324-4504-8032-c117b2d43dbb_e1b96db7.jpg?itok=eFdYs7Vk&v=1723434204)
4/5 stars
Being dead isn’t easy. In Dead Talents Society, a new supernatural comedy from Taiwanese director John Hsu Han-chiang, the afterlife is every bit as competitive and unforgiving as the land of the living.
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Spirits must prove themselves worthy of becoming ghosts through a rigorous selection process of auditions and contests, and avoid being condemned to eternal damnation.
For one newly deceased young woman, played by Gingle Wang Ching and known only as The Rookie, this comes as quite a shock and is a far cry from the eternal rest she expected to find on the other side.
For Wang and Hsu this is a reunion, having previously worked together on the 2019 horror hit Detention, but their second outing could not be further removed from the politically charged chills of their earlier collaboration.
Dead Talents Society is a far more lighthearted and humorous affair, closer in tone to the absurd, anarchic works of Giddens Ko Ching-teng, specifically his 2021 afterlife fantasy Till We Meet Again, in which Wang also played a pivotal role.
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