Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Marry My Dead Body’ on Netflix, a Puerile Taiwanese Comedy About ‘Ghost Marriage’ (2024)

Marry My Dead Body (now on Netflix): hell of a title, ain’t it? It makes sense once we get all explainy about it – it’s rooted in the Chinese tradition of “ghost marriage,” where a living human betroths oneself to a non-living human. Westerners might lack context to fully understand the generally outdated concept, but we soldier on. The movie was a box-office hit in its native Taiwan, and it runs the gamut of emotions, genre and topical fodder, ranging from slapstick to melodrama and action culled from cop dramas, and touching on LGBTQ issues along the way. It’s a difficult melange of tones and styles to navigate, and the movie sure takes its time doing so, clocking in at 130 minutes and therefore trying our patience and tolerance for tonal crazy-quilt movies like this.

MARRY MY DEAD BODY: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: A woman trims a lock of hair and a fingernail from a corpse and puts it in an envelope. MYSTERIOUS. Cut to: a workout facility, where gay men seem to congregate to lift weights and maybe enjoy a tryst in the locker room. This is where we meet Ming-han (Greg Hsu), a cop so hom*ophobic, he pretends to seduce a gymgoer, then arrests him for possessing three speckles of dust resembling illegal drugs. The poor guy was apparently guilty of very little outside of being gay. All in a day’s work for Ming-han, who we’ve known for five minutes and already is worthy of a size-14 boot in his ass. He goes back to police HQ where he calls a co-worker “Fatty” and belittles female officer Tzu-ching (Gingle Wang) for being the force’s pretty-face PR poster lady. Only two more hours of your life to spend with this guy!

After partaking in a car chase notable for its far-beyond-awful CG effects, Ming-han gathers evidence from the sidewalk and unwittingly grabs a red envelope, the possession of which immediately renders him the spouse of the corpse from the opening scene. (Don’t. You. HATE. It. When. That. Happens?) He’s unamused. To make it worse, the corpse was that of a gay man, and we’ve already determined that Ming-han doesn’t like those people and believes they should be locked up. He doesn’t seem to be the superstitious type to believe that denying the red envelope will result in ill fortune – until he throws it away and almost is beaned by a falling refrigerator before he’s hit by a truck. Unfortunately, he survives, and we still have the better part of two hours of a movie left.

Ming-han goes through with the ceremony, and soon finds himself capable of seeing his groom, Mao (Austin Lin). The only way out of this hellish scenario? Ming-han has to fulfill Mao’s wishes so he can be reincarnated, which means the cop has to do cop work to determine who killed Mao in a brutal hit-and-run. This involves infiltrating a drug ring alongside Tzu-ching while navigating the various loose ends of Mao’s life, including his strained relationship with his father and confronting the man Mao was supposed to marry while he was still alive. Notably, Mao can walk through walls and is invisible to everyone but Ming-han, which is helpful when investigating criminal activity, although it’s tough to explain to your boss who your informant is. Now, if you’re thinking this is the kind of story that sets up a deeply flawed protagonist for redemption – well, I will neither confirm nor deny that, but no matter how it swings, the truth holds firm: This is a deeply annoying movie.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Any movie that makes one remember that Over Her Dead Body is a movie that exists should be flogged and put in prison.

Performance Worth Watching: I dunno. All the on-screen work here is pretty thankless. Backing away slowly from this one.

Memorable Dialogue: Mao’s grandmother admonishes Ming-han for his hom*ophobia: “Don’t be a prude like us old people!”

Sex and Skin: Naked male butts.

Our Take: No dramatic or comedic point in Marry My Dead Body goes unbelabored in this overlong, overstuffed exercise in tonal whiplash. It tries so very hard to be funny and poignant and action-packed, but is ultimately desperate, trite, and tedious. When it’s not being a cartoon, it’s trying to forcefully yank tears from our ducts. It’s rather glib in its approach to death, which is a satirical gesture, and it’s sentimental in its depiction of grieving, broken hearts. If you haven’t noticed, a bunch of these things grossly contradict each other. The movie desperately needs to sh*t or get off the pot.

Weirdly, Marry My Dead Body doesn’t come off as entirely distasteful; it’s too benign and unserious to offend, and it’s rather obvious that Ming-han is a strawman who’s set up to be knocked off his bigoted perch. All the components for a nutty romp are present, but director Chang Wei-hao never seems interested in whittling the material down to something resembling coherence and consistency – or something that doesn’t try our patience with obviously telegraphed plot twists and revelations. I struggled to suss out the movie’s purpose; is it a diversion or a statement? Ultimately, it’s too much of a mess to be either.

Our Call: Marry My Dead Body never comes close to living up to that title. SKIP IT hard.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.