Each October, the Unsung Horrors podcast does a month of themed movies. This year, they will once again be setting up a fundraiser to benefit Best Friends, which works to save the lives of cats and dogs across America, giving pets second chances and happy homes.
Today’s theme: Taiwan
Director John Hsu (Detention) has traded the dark, moody shadows of what we expect of most modern horror for a neon-drenched, high-concept screwball afterlife that feels like All About Eve crashed head-first into Monsters, Inc. and Beetlejuice. Welcome to the Taiwanese underworld, where passing away is only the beginning of your bureaucratic nightmare.
In the realm of Dead Talents Society, ghosts don’t just linger in old mansions out of sheer spite. They stick around because they have working passes. Lose your pass, and you literally fade out of existence. How do you keep it? By scaring the living daylight out of mortal humans to generate afterlife clout and hit your spooky Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). It’s an entire haunting industry complete with talent agencies, jump-scare video algorithms and the coveted Golden Ghost Awards.
Enter The Rookie (Gingle Wang), a newly deceased young woman whose spectral existence is on a 30-day countdown timer after her family accidentally throws away her childhood certificate of hard work. She is useless at scaring people. Her jump scares look like someone trying to find their lost contact lens, and her spirit is crushed by a lifetime of feeling like an utter disappointment to her family—a feeling that literally crushed her to death under a trophy case in an earthquake.
Spotting potential in her complete lack of talent, Makoto (Chen Bolin), a washed-up former 90s pop idol turned ghostly talent agent, takes her under his wing. He pairs her with Catherine (Sandrine Pinna), an iconic, old-school hotel diva whose career was sabotaged by her ruthless former protégé, Jessica (Eleven Yao)—a modern ghost who has mastered the art of internet jump-scaring and haunted an American influencer to death for clout.
What follows is a glorious, fast-paced, heart-filled riot of physical comedy, practical blood-spurt stunts and sharp satire on modern burnout culture. When a ghost-hunting influencer named Non-Believer decides to film a livestream at the hotel, triggering both Catherine’s legacy horror and Jessica’s slick viral tactics, the underworld collapses into absolute chaos.
Underneath the blood-curdling screams, contorted body humor and spectral slapstick, John Hsu and co-writer Vincent Tsai deliver a moving critique of societal pressure. The Rookie’s struggle isn’t about becoming the scariest ghost in the room—it’s about learning that you don’t have to be exceptional just to deserve to exist. Gingle Wang is phenomenal as the anxious, wide-eyed Rookie, anchoring the film’s emotional core while taking absolute physical punishment on screen. Sandrine Pinna commands every inch of the frame as the fading diva Catherine, giving the film its tragic, classic-Hollywood flair, while Chen Bolin brings infectious sleazy-agent charm to Makoto.
Photographed with punchy, vibrant colors by Patrick Chou and featuring lush set designs (shot largely in the renovated Champagne Hotel in Jiaoxi), the film looks like a living comic book. The blend of traditional Taiwanese ghost lore with modern internet culture is executed flawlessly.
Dead Talents Society is easily one of the most inventive movies I’ve seen in some time. As always, here’s hoping no one remakes it here.
