REVIEW: NETFLIX'S THE GHOST BRIDE (ASSIGNMENT 3)

"The Ghost Bride" when I have heard the movie title I have known its gonna be a horror + romantic movie and further information, it was based on a real story from my country which Malacca state which known its historical places. so it got me more excited to watch it due to the boredom hits me during this lockdown.

This movie went by 6 episodes on Netflix. To be honest, the characters were handsome indeed includes the ghost himself. The Ghost Bride is a collection of adaptations of the New York Times bestselling novel of the same name written by the Malaysian author Yangsze Choo.

I'm going to say a rating of 8 out of 10 ratings. Both six episodes of The Ghost Bride are now available for Netflix streaming.

Set in the 1980s, Colonial Malacca, 20-year-old Pan Li Lan, and her family are invited to a party to celebrate the life of Tian Cheng, her childhood friend. Mrs. Lim suggested that Li Lan marry her deceased son to keep her family from drowning in debt. Unfortunately, this means that Li Lan has to spend the rest of her life visiting a ghostly husband.

The next day, Mr. Pan becomes ill while working at sea while Tian Cheng haunts Li Lan in her sleep to seek her to be his ghost bride. Tian Cheng warned Li Lan that her father could never recover from illness as he wanders around the netherworld. They both made an understanding later that she would locate the one who killed Tian Cheng for the sake of her father's well-being. As the story grows more desperate and frantic for Li Lan, she soon finds herself embroiled in the mystery of murder and stuck in ethereal affairs much more complicated than she could ever have imagined.

Though, they did a brilliant job of taking the audience in the settings of the colonial age of Malacca from the costume designs down to the furniture set pieces.

The show begins with an acceptable amount of humor built into the dialogs, but it wasn't what I expected given the name of the series. Later, the story deepens into being a romantic drama, It took about three-quarters of the first episode to add the horror elements to the series, which didn't do much then. The plot is still very fascinating to follow, but I'd prefer the show to be all about its horror values because, at the end of the day, that's what most Malaysian shows are all about.

With the story forces heavily on love conflicting between Li Lan and Lim Tian Bai, sometimes the pace of the story drags, particularly during Episode 2. As for the characters, Huang Peijia did a gratifying job with the main character, Li Lan. At times, she's really strange, but she's always been able to demonstrate how important her character is to the plot through her emotions.

The character in the series, Amah, played by Susan Leong. She didn't add anything to the plot, but she's beautifully showing off her nanny identities, reflecting all the great amahs in our lives.

Another character that strikes the strongest is Er Lang, a 500-year-old celestial guardian who came down to earth and helped Li Lan solve the death of Tian Ching, played by Wu Kang-Jen.

His character is the most convincing, and it's also what stops me from following the plot. There's a scene of him riding around the village while singing 'Gelang Si Paku Gelang,' which I think captures the essence of playfulness in his character.

The Ghost Bride had difficulty in speeding up during the build-up, but the show is moving on for the better as each episode pushes on to the last one. There's a twist-reveal in the last episode that took a dramatic turn for some of the characters in the plot.

One aspect that should be admired from this show is the design of production, which is one of the best that I have ever seen in Malaysian art. While it wasn't a masterpiece, it's a nice time to watch the show.

Author: Shobana Manokaran