Short Film Review: The Hopping Dead (2016) #31daysofhorror

SUBMITTED BY: Jimmy Lui; a stuntman/fight choreographer for such movies as Champion, Battleship, and Red Dawn, who made himself a short film.

From Jimmy Lui himself:

"I wrote and directed the film for Justin Lin's Interpretations 2.0 competition for YOMYOMF. The rules were the final film must be under 3 minutes long and must use these 4 lines of dialogue in this order with no additional dialogue or line substitutions. Other than that, you can do whatever story you want. The 4 lines of dialogue for the competition are:

• "Don't do that."
• "Of course."
• "I have my doubts."
• "What is it?"

Sounds fun.

Two thieves break into a Chinese business only to stumble upon the terror that is the Chinese jiang shi, a corpse reanimated as a vampire by Chinese black magic that, because of rigor mortis, chases after its victims by hopping.

I LIKE THE IDEA OF BEING A YANGGUIZI. HAS A NICE RING TO IT.

Jiangshi are Chinese hopping ghosts/vampires/or zombies, and are a real thing, at least as far as Chinese folklore goes. I imagine they're supposed to be far more frightening than the one in this short is, but seeing as the whole thing is played for laughs, no harm, no foul.

Jimmy Lui and his crew made the most of the three minutes that they were given. The Hopping Dead looks sharp, is witty, and it works well within the framework of its own rules. They even managed to sneak a bit of Kung-Fu in towards the end, which is definitely something that is in Lui's wheelhouse. 

I THINK THAT CAT HAS A QUESTION.

For a 3-minute long short that had to follow such specific dialogue guidelines, The Hopping Dead was pretty solid.

This was a fun 3 minutes.

B+ for ingenuity under such restrictions.

You can watch the short for yourself on Vimeo, HERE.

And now we know too.