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Transnational spectres and regional spectators: Flexible citizenship in new Chinese horror cinema

ABSTRACT Chinese horror's participation in the turn-of-the-millennium Asian horror boom has been largely pan-Asian. This article focuses on one such endeavour, Kelvin Tong's The Maid (2005), a MediaCorp Raintree co-production from Singapore, Hong Kong and the Philippines that has been billed Singapore's first home-grown international horror film. I argue that The Maid uses the horror genre to construct a cultural Chineseness based on a flattening of Confucian, Taoist and Buddhist aesthetics. Placing The Maid in the context of recent Asian horror films, this article investigates the various processes involved in the production, distribution and consumption of new Chinese horror, particularly how it functions as a regional genre that contests the notion of national cinema and problematizes the Sinophone. I contend that it is through the erasure of Singapore's non-Chinese cultural elements that the film aligns itself with regional Chinese horror and the international phenomenon of new Asian horror.