A full flight, and more than twelve hours in the air.
Along the way I watched *Love on Trial* and *Dune*, caught up on the ending of *Holland*, and watched *Backrooms* as well.
I had already seen the original Backrooms lore and the concept film when they first appeared. I never imagined that, more than a decade later, they would actually become a feature film.
The texture of the film’s opening brought *The Blair Witch Project* to mind, but the effects and the way the entire story was put together genuinely made my eyes light up.
Western thrillers, however, usually give us some sort of monster that kills or eats people. Even when I was watching those dark, unsteady shots, the psychological pressure was much lighter than it tends to be in Asian horror films.
Personally, I find a formless ghost far more frightening than a tangible creature.
Even with that qualification, *Backrooms* is still a film I would readily recommend.
Judging from the threads it has left hanging, there is a fair chance that the story could continue into a sequel.
When we landed at Taoyuan Airport, I took the “Transfer” side for the first time. It turned out that walking from Terminal 1 to Terminal 2 meant going through security all over again and pouring away any liquids.
Terminal 2 has been renovated. The overall impression is bright, and a great deal of thought has clearly gone into incorporating Taiwanese elements. Still, if I were a foreigner, I might not understand what those elements were meant to convey.
Compared with European-style airports, though, the atmosphere, colours, and general feeling were all much livelier.
Two hours was ample time for the connection: there was no pressure to hurry, yet the wait was not long enough to become exhausting. My only miscalculation was thinking I might have a chance to buy a cup of bubble milk tea. In the end, all I found was Starbucks.
Our scheduled departure had originally been brought forward by five minutes. Once boarding was complete, however, an airport exercise meant that the plane had to wait another twenty minutes before taking off.
This was a Pikachu-themed plane. Pikachu appeared on the pillowcases, headrest covers, and paper cups.
The flight was not full, and I was lucky enough to have all three empty seats to myself.
There were quite a few children on this flight too. I actually miss the days when children were still small. They may be difficult to control and an enormous drain on their parents’ minds and bodies, but those animal-like little creatures are far more endearing than the adults they grow into.
Perhaps it was the discomfort of flying at altitude, but there were groups of children at both the front and the back of this flight. Once we had taken off, they cried and shrieked without pause, calling back and forth to one another from opposite ends of the cabin.
I kept feeling the urge to rush over and help those parents soothe their children. Perhaps the sight of a complete stranger, some unfamiliar auntie “putting her hands on them,” would provide enough of a contrast to send them retreating into their parents’ arms for a cuddle. Then they might stop crying.
Naturally, I did not act on this irrational impulse. Instead, a middle-aged man suddenly sat down in the previously empty aisle seat in my row. Not only did he take the seat without so much as a greeting, he appeared to be settling in for good!
He ate his in-flight meal there, ruining my lovely plan to stretch out across all three seats by myself.
Worse still, once the cabin crew had cleared the meal away, he casually picked up the Pikachu pillow I had temporarily placed on the middle seat while I ate!
He moved so quickly that, before I could even say, “That’s my pillow!”, he had already tucked it behind his lower back…
Are adults, perhaps, really no better after all?
On the flight to Japan I watched *Hokusai’s Daughter*. It was beautifully made, but I am not familiar with the culture of the Edo period, so many of its cultural allusions escaped me: the significance of certain festivals, for instance, or the shot in which people drag freshly cut sections of bamboo past the main characters, and so on.
There may also have been gaps in the subtitle translation. This was clearly not meant to be an intellectually taxing film, yet the cultural gulf made it surprisingly taxing for me to watch. When I have time, I plan to read a few analyses and then return to the film to see whether I can understand it better the second time around.
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