‘Zong 4’ reveals the family trauma behind Jiamin’s desperate fight to save her aunt

The demons in “Zong 4: Kuntillanak” may terrify audiences, but the relationship that stays with them after the screening is the bond between Jiamin and her Aunt Yulan.

The Taiwanese horror film opened strongly in its first week. Its international exorcism plot and scenes of Zhong Kui confronting an Indonesian ghost provide the scares, yet the distributor’s newly released “Guardian” behind-the-scenes featurette highlights the story’s most tearful side. Some viewers said they expected a ghost movie and ended up crying through half a packet of tissues.

Jiamin, played by Hsu An-chih, grows up amid her mother’s domestic violence and verbal abuse. Her mother even directs at Jiamin the hatred she feels toward her husband. After her mother dies, the person who keeps Jiamin from falling apart is Yulan, played by Chen Hsueh-chen, who is also trapped in an abusive household. Both women have been hurt by their families, and they find in each other the only place where they can rely on someone.

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When Uncle beats me, you always protect me. I am not a child without parents.

One line from Jiamin captures why she refuses to abandon Yulan, even when confronting Kuntillanak could cost her life: “When Uncle beats me, you always protect me. I am not a child without parents.” Chen said the film’s deepest fear is not only the ghost, but what love becomes when it reaches an extreme. Yulan represents protection, while Kuntillanak resembles maternal love twisted beyond control.

Director Liao Shih-han said folklore and exorcism form only the film’s outer shell. The story is really about how people hold on to one another through trauma and face wounds that have never healed.

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What is truly frightening is not only the ghost, but what love becomes after it reaches an extreme.