Dead Talents Society (2025)
An Innovative Ghost Tale
What if ghosts are just as obsessed with attention and fame as living people? That’s the case in Dead Talents Society, a bizarre and clever Taiwanese horror comedy set in a world where ghosts are required to be scary or perish from existence forever.
The Rookie (Gingle Wang) is the newly deceased ghost of a young woman who was once a pianist. She auditions for the Dead Talents Society, a ghostly organization that holds contests where spirits compete to be the scariest.
If she fails the competition, she will perish permanently within a month. She is accompanied by her dead pal Camilla (Bai Bai). Rookie’s bumbling early attempts earn her nothing but scorn, but an agent, Makoto (Chen Bolin), decides to take the newcomer under her ghostly wing.
The ghosts haunt The Lucky Hotel, which has a deservedly strong reputation for being haunted. Social media influencers in the living world, including the notorious Non-Believer (Da-her Lin), visit the hotel in hopes of catching ghostly footage to post on their accounts.
Rookie and Ginger journey to the hotel. Their early attempts to scare people are futile. A major televised ghost competition is taking place. Can they conjure up some frights before it’s too late?
The movie’s other main storyline is the rivalry between two prominent ghost divas: Catherine (Sandrine Pinna) and her former understudy Jessica (Eleven Yao). Their heated conflict climaxes late in the film, with profound consequences for themselves and Rookie.
A Mix of Slapstick Gore and Grave Themes
Dead Talents Society is an obvious satire of reality television and social media influencers. At a slightly deeper level, it features existential themes (most of the ghosts believe that being forgotten by society is the true death) and a “be yourself, not who others want you to be” message.
This movie has plenty of laughs, but few, if any, scares. This is a horror comedy that leans hard into the comedy side of the spectrum. It’s ironic that a movie about ghosts competing to frighten people has no ghosts who are actually terrifying.
There’s plenty of gore, though. The ghosts take a lot of damage. Injuries that would obliterate a living person are just another day for them. They get right back up and keep on going.
The Rookie is an earnest and sympathetic character. She looks back at her life with regret, feeling that she was a failure, despite her best intentions. She gets some decent character development and her arc is capped with a tender final scene.
Other than Rookie, none of the characters really stood out to me. I didn’t care about any of them. But I enjoyed the spectacle of it all. This is a wild entertaining ride!
As I mentioned in the intro, this is a Taiwanese film. As you’d expect from a movie set in Taiwan (which is either an independent country or a Chinese province, depending on one’s perspective), the dialogue is in Mandarin.
Subtitles will be necessary for anyone who (like me) doesn’t understand the language. I always like to note this when I review foreign language films.
Rating
Dead Talents Society deserves major credit for its creativity, uniqueness, and sheer audacity. It grapples with multiple important themes, which is more than can be said for most ghost flicks, even if its exploration of these topics doesn’t have much depth.
Rating from 1 (avoid at all costs) to 10 (masterpiece): 7
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