Marry My Dead Body: A Quirky Asian Supernatural Film

Taiwan is leading the charge in queer Asian productions and they have, yet again, delivered the goods. Marry My Dead Body is an eccentric supernatural film that seeks to expose, in a very roundabout way, the banality and pointlessness of homophobia. It gets off to a bit of a shaky start, but it’s worth persevering and pushing through, especially if you typically enjoy the quirks of Asian television and cinema. 

Wu Ming Han (Greg Han Hsu) is a homophobic police officer who typically works on the drug squad. He’s known for his excessive use of force and his free use of homophobic language both on and off the job. He is demoted after a complaint about his professional conduct and ends up getting reassigned to a smaller unit. 

Meanwhile, Mao Pang-Yu (Po Hung-Lin) is living – or not quite living, actually – a very different existence. The man is gay, and one night after a fight with his father about his sexuality, Mao Pang-Yu stumbles into oncoming traffic and dies a violent death when he is struck by a car. 

One day, on the tail end of a job, Wu Ming Han picks up a red envelope from the ground. He is then approached by Mao Pang-Yu’s grandmother, who explains that because he touched the red envelope, Wu Ming Han is now betrothed to her dead grandson. If Wu Ming Han chooses not to go through with the union, a lifetime of bad things will ensue (yes, fam, she wants him to marry her dead grandson). 

Wu Ming Han initially dismisses the old woman and rejects her proposition to ghost-marry her dead son. She curses him then, and he begins experiencing a string of accidents that make him start to question if he should have taken her proposition seriously. Long story short, the homophobic man does marry the ghost of Mao Pang-Yu – who appears to him for the first time while he is naked in the shower – and so starts their journey of helping Mao Pang-Yu complete whatever unfinished business that is keeping him in this realm. 

Not surprisingly, in Marry My Dead Body, the pair don’t get off to a very good start. Wu Ming Han is nasty to Mao Pang-Yu and often uses harsh, homophobic comments to try and get him to go away. When that doesn’t work, it becomes obvious that Wu Ming Han doesn’t really have much choice but to help Mao Pang-Yu. 

It becomes clear soon after, that the reason Mao Pang-Yu is not crossing over and reincarnating is because of unfinished business with his ex-boyfriend Chen Chia-Hao (Aaron Yan). See, Pang-Yu didn’t know this at the time, but on the day of his death, Pang-Yu’s father saw Chen Chia-Hao cheating on his son with another man. This was the reason that his father was telling Pang-Yu that he couldn’t marry his boyfriend and that he would be disowned as a son if he did. 

At the time, Pang-Yu had interpreted this as an act of homophobia, rather than the act of attempted protection that it was, but the pair were never able to reconcile and sort out their quarrel before Pang-Yu died. 

It’s not what you think it is. Marry My Dead Body isn’t a love story. Despite that Wu Ming Han does manage to get over his homophobia as he develops a relationship with Mao Pang-Yu, nothing romantic ever develops between them. This is not a love story but in fact, a story that shows how a little bit of education and something as simple as knowing someone that may be different from you can build understanding and tolerance in this harsh world. 

Wu Ming Han and Mao Pang-Yu don’t fall in love, but by the end of the film, there is definitely a respect that has developed between the two men. So if you’re showing up for Taiwan’s signature BL kind of film, this isn’t it. However, Marry My Dead Body is worth the watch and is an entertaining story in all its rights. It’s actually a bit refreshing to see a queer story being told that doesn’t fit all the markers of all the trope-y BL stories around right now. 

Through the relationship, he builds with Mao Pang-Yu, Wu Ming Han is able to open his eyes and shed some of the homophobia that he has been pointlessly carrying around for his entire life. Apart from just being a goofy movie to watch with friends, if you’re someone who looks for a deeper meaning in things, this is definitely the takeaway from Marry My Dead Body. 

You’ll laugh a lot, but you may also need to stop and rewatch a scene or two in order to fully follow the story. If you’re someone that enjoys artful cinema, especially artful queer cinema, and you’re looking for something other than a typical love story, this could be the next thing for you. We are glad we pushed through and finished this one, and we bet that you will be too. 

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Marry My Dead Body is available to stream on Netflix now. Follow us on Twitter and Instagram for all queer stuff!