History Film / RigorMortis

* AnArmAndALeg: Yau has to do BloodMagic to activate a magical compass while Chin fights Tung, and not only is it fueled by blood, the device slowly and painfully twists his arm off.

* AdultFear: Abounds through the movie. The main plot is started when a washed-up actor [[DrivenToSuicide tries to hang himself]] after his wife leaves him and takes their son. [[spoiler: He actually succeeded, and the whole movie is his DyingDream.]]
** The REAL plot kicks in a nice way through the story, when an old woman’s husband falls down some wet stairs and dies, and she’s driven to necromancy to bring his rotting corpse back. She’s heavily implied to suffer SanitySlippage.
** Yang suffered a mental breakdown after her husband tried to rape two of his students in their apartment, got killed in revenge by one of them, and she found the bodies. She relies heavily on the complex’s neighbors to help out her and Pak. [[spoiler: Pak is later sacrificed by Meiyi, someone she trusted.]]
** Chin is constantly having flashbacks to when his family was younger and happier, and [[spoiler: his now-adult son has to identify his corpse in the morgue.]]

* DyingDream: [[spoiler:The events of the movie are revealed to be this.]]

* GenreSavvy AND WrongGenreSavvy: Uncle Yin asks Gau about where Tung’s been for days soon after finding one of his lost teeth on the stairs, since he’s known about Gau dabbling in necromancy since Gau was a kid. He doesn’t realize Meiyi is in on Tung’s disappearance, though, and [[spoiler: she desperately bashes his face in so the resurrection can go as planned.]]

** Feng suffered a mental breakdown after her husband tried to rape two of his students in their apartment, got killed in revenge by one of them, and she found the bodies. She relies heavily on the complex’s neighbors to help out her and Pak. [[spoiler: Pak is later sacrificed by Meiyi, someone she trusted.]]

* BrokenBird: Yang Feng is clearly mentally unwell due to the trauma of coming back to her apartment to find her husband stabbed to death along with the bodies of the twins. And that's not going into the fact that her husband died because he was trying to ''rape'' one of the twins.

** When Feng eats the spirit-offerings from Uncle Yin and gets discovered by Chin, she’s frightened of him and runs off, apologizing for “eating YOUR food.” This can be missed as a general apology to the spirits, especially since Feng’s called “crazy” by the other neighbors, but [[MadOracle she DOES also see spirits,]] and [[spoiler: the neighbors would have left Chin himself the offerings after they found his body.]]

* GenreSavvy AND WrongGenreSavvy: Uncle Yin quickly confronts Gau about where Tung’s been for days after finding one of his lost teeth on the stairs, since he’s known about Gau dabbling in necromancy since Gau was a kid. He doesn’t realize Meiyi is in on Tung’s disappearance, though, and [[spoiler: she desperately bashes his face in so the resurrection can go as planned.]]

* HopeSpot: The scenes where Feng and Pak move in with Chin and he slowly tries to coax Feng out of her trauma are quite sweet. [[spoiler: Unfortunately, Pak gets sacrificed to Tung shortly after.]]

** When Feng eats the spirit-offerings from Uncle Yin and gets discovered by Chin, she’s frightened of him and runs off, apologizing for “eating YOUR food.” This can be missed as a general apology to the spirits, especially since Feng’s revealed to be “crazy” by the other neighbors, but [[MadOracle she DOES also see spirits,]] and [[spoiler: the neighbors would have left Chin himself the offerings after they found his body.]]

** Yau spots the marker drawings that his son made on him, and chides him for not letting go of the past. [[spoiler: Chin’s]] constantly having flashbacks of his son as a child, but [[spoiler: in the morgue where Chin was taken after his suicide actually happened, he’s actually an ADULT and comes in to identify his body.]]

** Soon after he’s rescued [[spoiler: from his suicide attempt,]] everyone shrugs it off as soon as Yau dismisses them. Even considering [[ButForMeItWasTuesday Yau’s a vampire hunter who just dealt with a possession,]] not one person thinks to call an ambulance, or even ask if the clearly-suicidal new neighbor is okay. He’s also eating and talking without a hint of pain, when he should have gotten some nasty throat damage from an attempted hanging. At the very end of the movie, it turns out [[spoiler: the neighbors DID find his body after he hanged himself successfully. They are realistically more chaotic and upset, an ambulance gets there very quickly, and the scene fast-tracks Chin through the hospital… right up to the morgue.]]

** Soon after he’s rescued [[spoiler: from his suicide attempt,]] everyone shrugs it off after a few minutes, and not one person thinks to call an ambulance. He’s also seen eating and talking without a hint of pain or difficulty, when [[spoiler: he should have gotten some nasty throat damage from an attempted hanging.]] At the very end of the movie, [[spoiler: the neighbors DID find his body after he hanged himself successfully, and they are realistically more chaotic and upset.]]

** Soon after he’s rescued [[spoiler: from his suicide attempt,]] everyone shrugs it off after a few minutes, and not one person thinks to call an ambulance. He’s also seen eating and talking without a hint of pain or difficulty, when [[spoiler: he should have gotten some nasty throat damage from trying to hang himself.]] At the very end of the movie, [[spoiler: the neighbors DID find his body after he hanged himself successfully, and they are realistically more chaotic and upset.]]

** Soon after he’s rescued [[spoiler: from his suicide attempt,]] everyone shrugs it off and not one person thinks to call an ambulance. He’s also seen eating and talking without a hint of pain or difficulty, when [[spoiler: he should have gotten some nasty throat damage from trying to hang himself.]]

** Feng suffered a mental breakdown after her husband tried to rape two of his students in their apartment, got killed in revenge by one of them, and she found the bodies. She relies heavily on the complex’s neighbors to help out her and Pak. [[spoiler: Pak is later sacrificed by Meiyi.]]
* AlbinosAreFreaks: Subverted with Pak. Despite him drawing some [[NightmareFuelColoringBook rather unnerving pictures depicting the twins]], he's more a case of ChildrenAreInnocent.

* AntiVillain: Auntie Meiyi was a genuinely kind old lady, but the sudden death of her husband Uncle Tung causes her to go to some objectionable extremes to resurrect him, [[spoiler:eventually escalating to outright sacrificing a child]].

* ImpaledWithExtremePrejudice: [[spoiler:Tung ends up impaling Chin with a rod during their first confrontation. Unlike most examples, Chin is able to recover from it long enough to face Tung a second time thanks to Yau's timely assistance.]]

* MundaneUtility: How do you work with a surplus of gluttonous rice now that you have no vampires to use it on? In Yau's case, it's to open up a restaurant specializing in gluttonous rice dishes.

* DrivenToSuicide: Chin attempts to hang himself at the very start of the movie. [[spoiler:In the real world, he actually succeeded. Chin's DyingDream incidentally concludes with Meiyi slitting her throat to be with Tung after Tung is destroyed]].

* RapeAsBackstory: Yang's husband attempted to rape one of the twins during a tutoring session, driving the other twin to stab him to death to protect her sister. However, she also ended up getting stabbed during the scuffle, killing her. The surviving twin that was about to get raped hung herself shortly after to [[TogetherInDeath join her sister]].

* AnArmAndALeg: Yau has to do BloodMagic to activate a magical compass, and not only is it fueled by blood, [[{{Squick}} the device slowly and painfully twists his arm off.]]