We all need to accept that Brady Corbet believes in immersing audiences in the thick, fetid swamp of his own elephantine imaginings. Most of The Brutalist was mute nostril agony for me. But that was nothing compared to what’s coming.
For the last year or so Corbet has been cooking up a “get the whiteys!” racial revenge horror flick…a wokey-woke Chinese immigrant version of Killers of the Flower Moon but focused on the pain and trauma inflicted by whiteys upon Chinese silver mine and railroad workers back in the 19th Century, not through murder but by way of grueling work conditions and really shitty pay.
Descendents of Asian victims to white oppressors: You put our hard-working ancestors through hell back in the mid 1800s, not to mention the anti-Asian immigrant San Francisco race riot of 1877, and now it’s time for you, ya white motherfuckers, to suffer for your heartlessness and venality.”
Aaaannnddd Corbet’s film will reportedly run for over three and a half hours!
In a 2.17.25 interview on Marc Maron’s WTF Podcast, Corbet said the film will mainly take place in the 1970s (i.e., the horror stuff) but “also spans 150 years.” (the historical Chinese immigrant stuff), except the Chinese Transcontinental railroad workers mainly suffered during the 1860s, so Corbet was wrong — he meant that it reaches back a century or thereabouts.
Will the Asian retribution arrive in the form of undead ghouls?
On 12.26.24 Filmofilia‘s Allan Ford, having listened to Corbet expound during a Toronto Lightbox q & a, wrote the following: “Inspired by Tobe Hooper’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre, [Corbet’s next film] promises to juxtapose the visceral terror of horror with the emotional weight of immigration narratives.
“Set against the backdrop of 1970s California, Corbet’s ‘looser style’ aims to capture the era’s rugged, sun-drenched aesthetic while delving into the Chinese immigrant experience — a story rarely explored in Western cinema.”
19th century white railroad owners were cruel vicious shits, of course, but there’s no dimissing the suspicion that Corbet intends to deliver an Asian Killers of the Flower Moon with a Tobe Hooper-like horror overlay…evilwhiteyevilwhiteyEvilwhiteyevilwhiteyEvilwhiteyevilwhiteyEvilwhiteyevilwhitey….
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