Horror film ‘Chink’ is more than just blood and gore
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“Chink” is not your average horror film. It has the blood, guts and the gore of a traditional slasher movie, but Eddy Tsai, played by actor Jason Tobin from “Fast and the Furious,” does more than just kill people — he makes the audience question themselves and society.
The film follows Tsai in his serial murders, as he strives to become like his idol Ted Bundy, a notorious mass murderer. Unlike traditional serial killers, Tsai is motivated by his self-hatred, a byproduct of childhood bullying of his race and hatred of all Asian Pacific Americans.
When filmmakers Stanley Yung, Koji Steven Sakai and Quentin Lee developed the idea for their independently produced horror film, they hoped to not only entertain audiences, but also inspire them to explore issues involving racial identity.
Sakai, the screenwriter for “Chink,” describes his new film as “a slasher movie with a message” in an article for USA Projects. “The movie will make no apologies, it will push people’s buttons and make them squirm. Hopefully, though, it will foster much needed debate about the state of the Asian American male in our society,” he wrote.
“There are a lot of campy horror movies — ones that just go for the shock value. This movie has some substance,” said sophomore computer engineering major Alexander Oshiro, who serves as the secretary of the UMD Film Society. “It’s more of a message movie than what you would usually go to just a generic horror movie for.”
Few films to date have portrayed a minority character as a serial killer, often focusing instead on the typical white American male that many envision as the stereotypical offender of such calculated and heinous crime. According to graduate student Laura Dykstra, who is studying criminology, this movie taps into a growing trend within the field of criminal justice.
“Some of the newer things we’re seeing in serial crime have to do with crossing those racial and ethnic boundaries in terms of victim choice or in terms of offender,” Dykstra said. “So I think the film is timely in that sense — sort of expanding our understanding of what makes up a serial offender.”
Among the usual lists of most notorious American serial killers, very few are minorities and rarely are any of the perpetrators APAs. Dykstra proposed that the lack of diversity is because of the selection of notorious perpetrators rather than a lack of minority criminals.
“Part of the historical reason for these ideas might be because detection was focused more on white offenders, because they were more likely to target white victims,” said Dykstra. “So we certainly have historical examples of minority offenders that targeted minority victims, but those racial and ethnic lines are starting to blur a little bit in recent times.”
Freshman education major Caroline Weber is not sure whether she would be interested in seeing the horror film.“I think the premise of the movie is interesting though,” she said. “I like that you get a sort of back story with the character. I definitely think that it’s a story worth being told. It will make people think.”
“This movie is really its own thing. It’s pushing its limits. I’m looking forward to it, I’m definitely going to watch it,” said Oshiro. “I don’t think people will treat it as a horror film itself, it’s more than just that.”
Though “Chink” has not yet been released in theaters, filmmakers hope the message will translate to audiences and transcend the traditional boundaries of a horror film.
“Stories about identity politics don’t have to take themselves so seriously,” Sakai wrote. “They can have blood, guts and sex too.”
