Mon Mon Mon Monsters

Lore & Background

The film's plot centers on Lin Shuwei, a straight-A student falsely accused of stealing class funds. He is assigned community service alongside the bullies who framed him, led by Tuan Renhao. Initially disturbed by their abuse of elderly residents, Lin eventually participates to gain acceptance. During a night out, the group discovers a pair of flesh-eating female ghouls in an elevator shaft at an elderly home. They capture the younger ghoul and subject her to sadistic torture, exploiting her weakness to sunlight. The elder ghoul later confronts a war veteran, who dies after fighting her off. The bullies continue tormenting the captive ghoul, studying her blood and using it to poison their teacher, Ms. Lee, after she humiliates Renhao.

Reader's Guide

Mon Mon Mon Monsters is significant as a Taiwanese horror-comedy that blends social commentary on bullying with supernatural elements. Giddens Ko originally intended the film as a mockumentary shot on iPhone, but abandoned that idea as the project evolved into a more personal work inspired by backlash from a widely publicized affair. Ko stated: 'Maybe millions of Taiwanese people hated me, so I wanted to shoot a horror movie to scare everybody, to express my hate.' The film explores themes of mob mentality, cruelty, and the dehumanization of others, using the ghoul as a mirror for the bullies' own monstrous behavior. Its legacy lies in its unflinching portrayal of sadism and its reflection of the director's personal turmoil during its creation.

Did You Know?

• The film was originally intended to be a mockumentary shot entirely on iPhone, but this idea was disregarded.
• The bullies use a portrait of Chiang Kai-shek to subdue the ghoul after discovering her weakness to sunlight.
• The film premiered as the closing film for the 41st Hong Kong International Film Festival in April 2017.

Creative Origins & Personal Catharsis

Mon Mon Mon Monsters was conceived, written, directed, and co-produced by Giddens Ko, who initially envisioned the project as a mockumentary captured entirely on an iPhone. That stripped-down, guerrilla approach was ultimately abandoned as the script grew into something far more intimate and emotionally charged. The turning point came when Ko found himself at the center of a widely publicized personal scandal involving an affair, which drew intense public backlash across Taiwan. Rather than distance himself from that fury, he channeled it directly into the screenplay. In his own words, the director explained that millions of fellow countrymen may have despised him, and his response was to craft a horror film designed to frighten them all while simultaneously voicing his own anger. The result is a work that reads less like a conventional genre exercise and more like a personal exorcism, with the monstrous elements serving as an externalization of the social rejection Ko experienced during the production period.

Narrative Architecture & The Ghoul Sequence

The story follows Lin Shuwei, a quiet top student with no social circle, who is framed by his classmates for embezzling class funds. His tormentors—a clique led by Tuan Renhao and including Wu Sihua, Liao Kuoheng, and Yeh Weichu—humiliate him publicly, fabricate a sexual-assault photo, and threaten his eyes with a wall dart. His teacher, unwilling to escalate the bullying, instead assigns the three male aggressors to perform community service alongside Lin, feeding elderly residents. What begins as forced proximity slowly transforms: Lin, starved for belonging, begins participating in the group's cruelties toward the seniors, painting their faces and forcing them into mock fights, and finds genuine joy in finally being accepted. The tonal shift arrives when the boys, searching a locked box in the home of a demented war veteran, encounter two flesh-eating female ghouls lurking in the building's elevator shaft. One is struck by a car; the group drags the seemingly lifeless creature back to their hideout, where what follows is a prolonged, escalating sequence of captivity and torture that spirals into catastrophic consequences.

Festival Debut & Theatrical Run

Mon Mon Mon Monsters made its world debut as the closing film of the 41st Hong Kong International Film Festival in April 2017, a prestigious slot that signaled the industry's recognition of the project as a standout piece of contemporary Taiwanese cinema. The film then entered general theatrical distribution in Taiwan on July 28, 2017, roughly three and a half months after its festival premiere. Classified as a horror-comedy, the picture blends grotesque body-horror set pieces with darkly comic character interactions, a tonal hybrid that distinguishes it from more straightforward genre entries. Giddens Ko served as writer, director, and co-producer, giving the project a singular authorial voice from development through final cut. The festival-to-theaters trajectory also meant that the film first reached a curated, cinephile audience before a broader public, allowing early word-of-mouth to shape its reception. For a director who had just navigated a highly publicized personal controversy, the choice to close one of East Asia's most prominent film festivals with a film explicitly rooted in his own anger and desire to scare everybody made the premiere a deeply personal career milestone as much as an industry event.

Thematic Layers & the War Veteran Subplot

Beneath the horror-comedy surface, the film constructs a layered commentary on power, belonging, and dehumanization. Lin Shuwei's arc traces how a socially isolated teenager, desperate for acceptance, gradually mirrors the very cruelty that was inflicted on him—painting the faces of elderly residents and cheering them on in mock fights—finding in the group's approval a substitute for self-worth. The captured ghoul becomes the ultimate symbol of this cycle: a non-human entity that the bullies feel entitled to torment because, as Renhao declares, it is not a person and therefore beyond moral constraint. Lin, by contrast, expresses sympathy for the creature, acknowledging that he himself would have been the one chained and tortured had the ghoul not existed. Parallel to this, the demented veteran of the National Revolutionary Army's 29th Broadswords unit, who sings an old army song to lure the elder ghoul into a final confrontation, represents a generation defined by loyalty and sacrifice, dying still standing after defending his compatriots. These interlocking narratives elevate the film beyond simple monster-horror into a meditation on who gets to be treated as human.