Rigor mortis is a cool movie about Japanese ghosts and monsters that inhabit a public housing tenement in Hong Kong. The main character is a washed up actor named Chin who's down on his luck and moves into an apartment that has been vacant for a long time and promptly attempts to hang himself and something about his wife and kid, which is never explained except for the fact that he has, or had, a wife and kid. A ghost starts to posses him in the middle of the dirty deed and then some random guy comes and saves him while forcing the creepy ghost lady out of his body. When that's all over, 15 or so residents are just staring into his room and their reaction is similar to that of a mugging, shocked but seemingly ordinary.

The next half hour is filler with the main character sitting in places, walking in places, talking to the dude who saved him, and overall just not advancing the plot at all. I forgot to mention the dude who saved him originates from a long line of vampire hunters, and carries a pocket full of glutinous rice because vampires are afraid of that poo poo or something, and then it never comes into play again. He also talks to this older lady, her name is Auntie Mui and she is like the local seamstress for the residents, they have a conversation where Chin, for the one and only time, brings up the fact that he is an actor, and maybe Auntie can fix some of his acting clothes, and then nothing comes of it and it was really just a waste of film.

On to something else and then flashbacks start happening, and it shows a dude starting to rape one of twin girls he is supposed to be tutoring, the other girl comes up behind him and starts stabbing him in the chest with scissors, and somehow they are able to pierce through his body and into hers and she ends up stabbing herself to death in the process, fetching rad. When the other twin sees this, she hangs herself, and guess what, it's the same fetching room that Chin now lives in and the same girl/ghost that tried to possess him.
 
Somewhere in between all this, Auntie May's husband falls down some stairs after seeing some ghost child thing and breaking his neck or something, skipping over like 45 minutes of the movie, one of the residents comes upon him, not entirely dead yet, and starts to drag him up the stairs, he gets frustrated with carrying him he instead throws him over the edge where he falls a few floors and explodes half his face. Going back 45 minutes now, this guy is actually a practitioner of black magic, and has agreed to try and resurrect him for Auntie because she loves him so much. Cue black magic ritual involving weird things and viola, they witch doctor says his soul will return in 7 days like the ring. The one big no no however, is ever removing the ritual mask on his face. Something the doctor dude points out to auntie multiple times, he seriously cannot stress enough not to remove the mask, seriously just don't do it, so you can see where that is going.

So vampire dude is investigation poo poo, like where is Uncle Tung (exploded face guy), and why is auntie Mui acting all weird, and for fetchs sake, he told the doctor dude that black magic is bad so stop doing it, even if you aren't using it for evil. The Doctor needs the souls of the twin girls to complete the resurrection and put them in the body, so he lays a trap in Chins room where he attempts to catch the souls using Chin as bait, Vampire Hunter smells something fishy and heads that way, where doctor and hunter tag team the sexy Japanese ghosts and traps them in a wardrobe thing. Smart hunter guys says doctor needs to burn it to get rid of the ghosts, he knows he can't trust doctor to do it, but for the sake of the plot, he leaves anyways.

Doctor takes the wardrobe and does his voodoo poo poo on it, but auntie is getting super impatient and wants to be with her boo. At this point i will introduce 2 characters who have been in the movie most of time but are really unimportant and useless. One is a lady (Wife of the dude that raped the twin) and her son. They are squatting in the building because lady can't bring herself to live in the apartment where 3 people died. Vampire hunter uses the kid, Pak, to run recon in auntie may's place because no one suspects a kid, Auntie is like hey do you want to see Uncle Tong? because no one is sure if he is dead or alive, so the kid does, starts crying instantly and then the door is shut behind him where he is apparently slaughtered by Uncle, and auntie is just kind of crying but was like he needs to eat children. Cut to scene of ceremonial mask sitting on a desk instead of on dudes face, fetching dumb bitch.

Lady goes out looking for her son and finds the wardrobe which is surprisingly not burned, go figure,  and sealed with some magic and a lock, being the genius that lady is, she breaks the lock and releases the twin japanese ghosts without knowing it. After some more walking down hallways ringing a bell, she finds her son and then has a breakdown. Pak is supposedly dead, yet there he is walking around but clearly something ain't right and it is never explained. Next seen is lady walking down a hallway with a stick with nails sticking out of it, no idea where she got that from, and she tries to go toe to toe with Uncle Tongue, but oh poo poo he is a vampire! This whole time he was a vampire! maybe the mask suppressed his vampireness, maybe he became a vampire when the mask was removed, this is never explained. He kills her, Chin comes to save the day lights him on fire, and then knocks him into a bunch of pots holding gluttonous rice, effectively beating the vampire, instead of getting ripped to shreds, thanks plot armor.

But wait, the twin Japanese ghosts decide to possess Japanese vampire, and during this is the real kicker. The vampire is pretty much just hoping around with his arms outstretched. At this exact moment, I instantly recognized that this is a Chinese vampire, holy poo poo these are all Chinese ghosts and monsters, wow that's amazing, it's like the setting is Hong Kong, fetchING CHINA. So now go back and reread everything but replace Japanese with Chinese, that's what i had to mentally do while watching the movie and i felt retarded because i never caught on and just assumed Japanese. Anyways Chin gets his poo poo rocked and is impaled by a 10 foot metal rod and CHINESE vampire twin sexy ghost Uncle Tung hops away like a fetching rabbit. Chin somehow un-impales himself on the 10 foot rod and makes his way to vampire hunter who is for serious now because it's a vampire.

They set some weird Chinese vampire trap and chin fights toe to toe with super vampire because of magic, where he is not bleeding out from the fetching hole in his abdomen. Vampire guys is doing his thing that involves twisting some relic that changes the environment for the fight for some reason that is never explained, he twists so hard he literally twists his arm off. Something happens, chin and vampire are wrapped in trap rope, Vampire hunter jumps out window into the sun dragging the dynamic duo with him, all 3 survive a 24 floor drop, Auntie May comes out of no where and watches vampire husband ghost lady man burn in the sun, says she will join him and cuts her throat ear to ear with broken glass and it looks really fetching intense. And then everyone dies. THE END.






Just kidding, flashback through Chin's eyes to the beginning of the movie and Chin is walking to his partment to move in. Hangs himself and succeeds this time, then he is in the morgue and someone is there to identify his body, it's his son, who looks to be the same age as dear old dad, except the kid is shown to be like 9 in earlier flashbacks. Ending makes no sense, half the things that happen are not explained. In one scene there are 4 traditionally clad things holding umbrellas walking down the hall, and lady and son freak out and hug the wall, and tell Chin to always stay close to the wall when they walk by, presumably because there are ghosts or something that will kill you otherwise, i don't know, it's not explained. Half the characters are unnecessary, a large part of the movie has no significance to the overall plot.




10/10

So these are Japanese ghosts invading China?

Sounds like a war movie to me. 

Did the ghosts hop as they moved?

No they are Chinese ghosts, I'm just an idiot and confused them with Japanese ghosts because all Asians are the same

It had a total of 5 minutes of kung fu in it, so almost like a war movie, but there wasn't actually a war going on because vampire's are all gone and the vampire hunter can't be bothered to fight ghosts unless he is in the vicinity

And yes there was a lot of ghosts hoping around

i read the title and thought it said rigists mortis and thought this was gonna be about big rigs who die and was sad but its just ghosts so im happy but also sad about no big rigs

i was thinking about this movie today and how fetched up it was

rigists mortist would make for a great horror movie as well

I read the whole thing 


A very WINNER review

Rigger: "More tits"