Marry My Dead Body review: Is Netflix's Taiwanese film worth a watch?

Taiwanese film Marry My Dead Body is undoubtedly a rollercoaster for viewers as it takes them on a journey of comical to action sequences while also incorporating elements of a ghost story, romance, and mystery. The horror-comedy dropped on Netflix earlier today, i.e., August 10, 2023.

Marry My Dead Body uses an absurd combination of a top detective, Wu Ming-Han, and a ghost, Mao Mao, to casually break stereotypes against Taiwan's LGBTQ+ community regardless of the same-sex marriage legislation in the country. The film, however, runs multiple plotlines parallelly and goes too far with the dramatics, making it too complex to grasp the centric social comment.

Directed and co-written by Cheng Wei-hao, best known for his penchant for horror and helming the first two parts of The Tag-Along series, the film stars Greg Han Hsu in the lead role as detective Ming-Han. Other cast members include Po-Hung Lin as Mao, Gingle Wang as Lin Tzu-Ching, Chen-Nan Tsai as Lin Hsiao-Yuan, and Nien-Hsien Ma as Chang Yung-Kang, among others.

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Besides the goofiness and critical social comments, Marry My Dead Body's multiplicity ruins central story arcs

Marry My Dead Body starts on a spooky note and then immediately tackles Wu Ming-Han's homophobia that hinders him from exceeding as a detective despite his bearing great potential and top-class skills. Initially, the special effects seem too much, especially during the car chase scenes. But since the film focuses on fantasizing about it all, the sequences seem bearable.

But Ming-Han's goofiness and his life take a wild turn after he comes across a red envelope, which suggests he was chosen by fate to marry a dead, gay man, and he immediately resists because, firstly, it's straight-up disturbing and freakish to marry the dead. Secondly, let's not forget the person was gay.

It is due to this same homophobic attitude that Ming-Han's career takes a significant hit for throwing a councilman's gay son to the ground during a drug bust at the film's beginning. The precinct Chief demotes and transfers the detective. This practically throws all his dreams of getting a commendation down the drain. He also believes it's bad luck coming from that particular red envelope he found.

As Marry My Dead Body progresses, Wu Ming-Han is convinced to marry Mao Mao's ghost, a tradition centered around the Chinese legend of ghost marriage. As the newlywed work on reincarnating Mao Mao, and in exchange, Ming-Han asks for assistance to get back his old job. The arc implements supernaturalism and fantasy into the story.

As the bond between the unconventional "couple" evolves as they both try to help each other, the narrative takes a mysterious when Ming-Han finds out that Mao Mao was killed in a hit-and-run case and that his old precinct was had the case but lost the only evidence that could have helped solve it. He also links his death to another case he was previously working on.

Another angle highlighted throughout the film is that surrounding Lin Tzu-Ching and touches upon aspects of feminism and workplace equality, especially in the police. Lin seems to be the only female officer in the precinct, and despite being the face of the squad, she is never given credit for her hard work. She is also never handed important cases alone.

Marry My Dead Body's climax, however, depicts Lin as the cunning mole playing both sides. Her triumph completely changed the dynamics because she was not the "poor thing" that everyone thought she was. It ends on an emotional note with Mao Mao saving Ming-Han's life, and the latter helps his spirit find peace and move towards reincarnation after finding closure.

However, while watching the two-hour-ten-minute-long film, it does become difficult to grasp the central theme of homophobia which gets lost within the multiple plots that run parallelly. There is action, laughter, suspense, thrill, and comedy in social comments. But the diversity tends to ruin the story's simpler and more principal sides.

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Marry My Dead Body is now streaming on Netflix.