Yang won’t give up the ghost
Taiwanese actress revisits an urban legend in the spooky sequel Tag-Along 2
TAIPEI, Taiwan — Taiwanese singer and actress Rainie Yang stars in The Tag-Along 2, a sequel to the 2015 hit that’s loosely based on a ghostly urban legend in Taiwan about a little girl who appears in the footage of a family’s hiking trip.
The only problem was, she wasn’t part of the family and no one seemed to recall seeing a young girl on the mountain that day.
The actual footage of the mysterious girl in red was broadcast on Taiwanese television in the 1990s. Some believed she was roaming the mountains, looking for her next victim.
“The little girl in red was photographed really clearly,” Yang said in an interview with The Associated Press. “People have been talking about it for the last 20 years. It happened when I was very little, but I still remember it well, so it definitely had a far reach.”
In the sequel, Yang plays a social worker whose daughter goes missing in the mountains. She joins the search-and-rescue team and while looking for her lost daughter gets haunted by the little girl in red.
“From there, she discovered the obsession of the little girl in red,” Yang said. “Everyone has their obsession, whether you’re human or a ghost. And when you have an obsession, you can’t let it go. That’s why you keep hanging around and can’t get over it. So because she stumbled across all this, the story began.”
It is customary in Asia to hold a blessing ceremony before filming commences for horror movies to keep the cast and crew from harm’s way. Yang said the sequel included a blessing ceremony before shooting every scene.
She found out later that quite a few coincidences happened while filming the first movie, which prompted director Wei-hao Cheng to take extra precautions while making the second.
“When they were shooting the first film, a lot of the men (crew members) will relieve themselves wherever it’s convenient. Sometimes they’re not being thoughtful about it, and no joke, the next day, they will get a fever. They will get sick the next day,” Yang said.
“So they feel like they had to believe … You can’t go to (the) toilet wherever you want. They realized that they needed to pay attention to that. So, to avoid people getting sick during the filming of the sequel, and because it’s very inconvenient to find a toilet (in the wilderness), and also they didn’t want the crew to get sick to delay filming, that’s why at every set, there is a toilet just for our cast and crew.”
The star of the first movie, Weining (Tiffany) Hsu, returns in the sequel. This time, Hsu’s character takes a darker turn and is on the brink of a breakdown. Yang, who is friends with Hsu, said the challenge for both of them was to put aside their friendship and act like complete strangers when the cameras were rolling.
“We’ve known each other for about 18 years,” Yang said. “We have such great chemistry but there was no use for it in this movie, because her character lives in her world, and I’m focused on mine, so they didn’t have much interaction. For us, our challenges lie in pretending we’re strangers,” Yang said.
The Tag-Along 2 hits theatres in Taiwan on Friday.