Corrado Neri, "Taiwanese Horror Cinema in the 21st Century: Spectral Narratives and Screen Culture" (Anthem Press, 2026)
Taiwanese cinema is internationally celebrated for the
auteurs of the Taiwan New Cinema. Yet over the past fifteen years,
ghosts, demons, curses and haunted screens have become increasingly
prominent, turning horror from a marginal genre into an important strand
of Taiwan’s popular cinema.
Professor Corrado Neri’s new book, Taiwanese Horror Cinema in the 21st Century: Spectral Narratives and Screen Culture (Anthem
Press, 2026), explores this transformation. Neri argues that Taiwanese
horror has reached a new stage of maturity: it is now an established
industrial category, has diversified across genres and media, and has
developed a sophisticated capacity to address Taiwan’s social,
historical and technological anxieties.
The book also launches the new short book series, ‘Anthem Impact in Asian Media, Cinema and Communications’.
In this podcast conversation, Dr Ming-yeh Rawnsley talks
with Professor Neri about what Taiwanese horror can tell us about Taiwan
itself. Their discussion moves from ghosts and folklore to democracy,
historical memory, digital culture and changing understandings of
identity. Themes include:
Why horror? – how a once-marginal genre became an important part of Taiwanese cinema.
Taiwan as a ‘Ghost Nation’ – why ghosts offer powerful ways of thinking about Taiwan’s contested history and identity.
Horror,
democracy and historical memory – how liberalisation opened new
possibilities for confronting difficult histories, notably the White
Terror in Detention.
Religion,
folklore and the supernatural – how beliefs, rituals and local legends
provide filmmakers with distinctive cultural resources.
Digital ghosts – how smartphones, social media, gaming and screen culture have transformed haunting.
Gender, sexuality and queer horror – how films such as Marry My Dead Body use supernatural conventions to explore changing social identities.
Taiwan
within Asian horror cinema – how Taiwanese filmmakers engage with
regional traditions while developing recognisably local forms.
One of the book’s most compelling arguments is that the
supernatural provides a productive language for exploring Taiwan’s
relationship with its past and present. Detention transforms the political violence of the White Terror into a spectral landscape of memory, guilt and historical reckoning. The Tag-Along, The Rope Curse and Incantation bring folklore and ritual into contact with cameras, smartphones and social media.
Taiwanese horror is also transmedial. Detention moved from video game to feature film, television series and novel; The Bridge Curse and Incantation have extended into gaming, while The Tag-Along
has expanded into webtoon and virtual reality. Horror thus forms part
of a wider creative ecosystem in which cinema intersects with digital
media, popular culture and Taiwan’s cultural-content industries.
Taiwanese horror therefore deserves attention beyond horror
enthusiasts or film specialists. These films frighten, surprise and
sometimes make audiences laugh, but their ghosts also carry history.
They negotiate memories of authoritarianism and democratisation,
questions of gender and sexuality, and move between temples, cinemas,
video games and smartphone screens.
The ghosts haunting contemporary Taiwanese cinema are
rarely just ghosts. They offer another way of asking questions about
Taiwan: how the past survives in the present, how identities are
continually remade, and how a rapidly changing society chooses to
remember—and imagine—itself.
Dr Ming-yeh T. Rawnsley is a Research Associate at the
Centre of Taiwan Studies, SOAS University of London, and a host for the
New Books Network. She is also a co-editor (with Professor Gary
Rawnsley) of the short book series, ‘Anthem Impact in Asian Media,
Cinema and Communications’.
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