With The Tag-Along 2, pop star Rainie Yang is box office queen of Taiwan’s horror cinema – despite not even liking the genre
Actress who was ‘too afraid’ to watch the original film and can’t bring herself to say ‘I like horror films’ explains how she came to star in Cheng Wei-hao’s hit movie, and why she isn’t sure she’d reprise her role if there’s a The Tag-Along 3
This week, box office takings in Taiwan for The Tag-Along 2 – already the highest-grossing local production of the year there and best-performing Taiwanese horror film in more than a decade – passed NT$100 million (US$3.3 million). For pop star Rainie Yang Cheng-lin, it must have been a little awkward to be both the film’s top-billed actress ... and its least willing audience member.
“Of course I’m afraid of ghosts. Who isn’t? It’s just a matter of whether you encounter them [for real],” Yang, 33, tells the Post in a recent interview. “I don’t have much curiosity about ghosts and other invisible entities. I try to avoid listening to ghost stories, and I would rather not watch any ghost movie if I had a choice.” Laughing, she adds: “The audience shouldn’t follow my lead here.”
She continues: “It’s true that I try [not to think about ghosts] because I’m too timid. Even when I haven’t seen anything, I’d suspect that I had seen something.”
While this makes Yang far from an ideal spokeswoman for The Tag-Along 2, the film’s 33-year-old director, Cheng Wei-hao, felt the actress was a perfect fit for her role after watching Yang play a mother in a recent television series in Taiwan, and the lead role in 3D horror film The Child’s Eye (2010), directed by the Hong Kong-based Pang brothers.
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Cheng’s own part in 2015 film The Tag-Along and its sequel was no less of a coincidence than Yang’s in The Tag-Along 2. Despite never having been much of a horror fan himself, Cheng – then without a full-length feature under his belt, and originally appointed just as acting director of the first film, tasked with honing its screenplay – was installed late on as its director. The film went on to become the top-grossing Taiwanese horror movie of the past decade, a mantle it has now ceded to the sequel.