The Filipino supernatural horror film, Strange Frequencies: Taiwan Killer Hospital, which made quite a name for itself in the country over the last few months, has finally been released to global audiences on Netflix. Under the shiny visuals and fairly intense atmospheric setting is the otherwise common plot of a group of ghost-hunters encountering a series of bewildering hauntings while spending an entire night at an abandoned hospital in Taiwan, notorious for its extremely spooky nature. Adapted from the 2018 South Korean horror, Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum, Strange Frequencies makes for a decent viewing, mostly because of the effective use of the found-footage/live-streaming style, but it is still slightly disappointing on account of the vague plot and some of the performances.
Spoiler Alert
What is the film about?
Strange Frequencies: Taiwan Killer Hospital begins with two foreign vloggers shooting a video of themselves at an abandoned hospital in Tainan City, Taiwan. They have clearly come to the place to check whether the Xinglin Hospital, which is believed to be haunted, actually has any supernatural presence, and the vloggers, seemingly a couple, are initially quite skeptical. However, their opinion changes very quickly when the man, Ethan, hears some loud screams from inside the hospital, and assumes that someone is calling for their help. As Ethan disappears into one of the wards, his girlfriend is attacked by something supernatural, which is caught on her camera, and she ultimately dies. News clippings of the discovery of the dead vloggers follow, as Xinglin Hospital’s notoriety as a terribly haunted building continues to grow.
The news report grabs the attention of Filipino actor and dancer, Enrique Gil, or Quen, who has been on the lookout for interesting production projects for quite some time now, and it immediately gives him a fresh new idea. Quen decides to produce a horror show called “Strange Frequencies,” with a bunch of celebrities and social media influencers, in which they would all spend a whole night inside Xinglin Hospital, wearing extensive camera rigs to record everything from their point-of-view, and also livestream the whole show to give audiences the feeling of them exploring the place in real time.
The biggest name in his cast is perhaps Jane De Leon, the Filipino actress and model most known for her action films, while one of her frequent co-stars, Rob Gomez, is also on the team. The up and coming actress, Alexa Miro, excitedly states during their meeting that she is ready to do literally anything to make the show a hit. MJ Lastimosa, the winner of Miss Universe Philippines 2014, clarifies that she had joined the production not only for the fame and the money, but also to show the world how she could remain graceful even amidst supernatural hauntings. Zarckaroo, a YouTuber famous for his ghost-hunting expeditions has been selected to guide the team on how exactly to produce the livestream. Raf Pineda, a TikTok influencer and tarot reader, clearly admits that he agreed to be a part of the show only because of the money.
Driven by the intense desire to make a popular show, and also by the financial promises from the brand endorsements they would receive if the livestream reached 3 million concurrent viewers, Quen and his team of actors and influencers set out to Taiwan for their bold mission. They are met by a local guide, Lee Fung, who takes the team to the abandoned hospital, and the guide then bribes the sole guard at the building complex to let them inside. Thus begins the long night for the six celebrities, who are soon divided into pairs to explore the apparently haunted building, while Quen oversees the streaming, with them still unaware of the very real hauntings that they are about to witness.
Does Xinglin Hospital really exist?
The seven celebrities at the center of Strange Frequencies are real-life actors, musicians, and influencers, who all play themselves in the film. The found-footage mockumentary style also gives viewers the feeling they’re witnessing true events. Similarly, the setting in which the plot takes place, the abandoned Xinglin Hospital in Tainan, is indeed a real place. In the film, it is mentioned that the hospital had been shut down 30 years ago, after having faced repeated complaints and lawsuits for wrongful deaths and medical malpractice, and a suspiciously high number of infant deaths.
The real Xinglin Hospital, according to information on the internet, was really ordered to shut down by the government in 1993, more than 30 years ago. The reason mentioned for such an order also matches with the description in the film, as there had been numerous reports of fraudulence and malpractice against the doctors and staff. While Strange Frequencies might have taken creative liberties with regards to the report of infant deaths, and the story associated with it (discussed later in the article), the background of the hospital, and the reason for it being abandoned are true to real life.
Surprisingly, the large hospital building and complex was never demolished or reused, which left it abandoned and derelict, with OTs and wards still intact. Naturally, the place became a point of interest for the public, and paranormal stories got associated with it, just like with most abandoned buildings. Xinglin Hospital, which is still a popular spot for ghost-hunters and horror content creators, is often considered one of Taiwan’s most haunted sites, and the film obviously takes advantage of this notoriety.
What had happened to the foreign vloggers?
The foreigners seen at the beginning of the video are found dead at the end of their adventurous night at the hospital, and although the authorities officially claim that they had committed suicide, many people on the internet question this statement. The fact that the vloggers were ghost-hunters made it obvious that they had been searching for paranormal entities at the hospital, and therefore the claim that they had flown from their homeland to Taiwan just to commit suicide seemed odd to many. While it had been initially teased that the couple had indeed been attacked by malevolent spirits, what exactly happened to them becomes clear later in the film, when one of the characters finds the camera used by the vloggers.
One of the two main supernatural entities in Strange Frequencies is an evil spirit that can mimic the voice and even appearance of human beings, especially humans it has already targeted and killed. Its main purpose behind doing so is to lure in more targets and kill them, which is why it is often seen using the voice or physical appearance of people close to the humans it is currently targeting. In case of the vloggers, they had been targeted by this very spirit, which first mimicked the cries of trapped men and women to lure the man, Ethan, into the halls, where it surely killed him. Next, the spirit took on the voice and form of Ethan to call out to his unnamed girlfriend, who realized what was going on and managed to stay away from it by hiding in a closet. This is why she is heard stating in the video that something that looks like her boyfriend is trying to get her. Ultimately, the woman is attacked by the spirit, as it took her own appearance to confuse her. The vlogger must have jumped out of a glass window to avoid getting caught by the ghost, and this is why her death was ruled to have been a suicide. At the very end of the film, Quen actually dies in a similar manner, by throwing himself out of the window.
What do the murals and the statue mean?
The mural of a demon with multiple hands and three faces is seen on walls at various parts of the hospital, and this demonic spirit seems to be the same one that haunts most of the characters in the film. The foreign vloggers had also come across the same mural, just as the main characters do later on, and all the hauntings begin, in both cases, after seeing the mural. Eventually, a statue of the demon is also found on one of the upper floors of the hospital, and it is established as one of the key elements behind the hauntings.
The demon seems to be an extremely powerful and violent entity from the supernatural world, which has to be summoned through a lot of intense rituals. There is evidence throughout the film that various such rituals had been carried out inside the hospital building, first on the upper floors, where the owner and his family lived, and then inside some of the wards of the hospital as well. The most probable explanation is that the demon had been summoned for some reason, and it then managed to linger on inside the hospital, haunting anyone who enters the place to this day. The most obvious hint at the fact that it is this very demon killing the characters one after another is that MJ Lastimosa is seen with two-faces stitched onto her head, just like the demon’s own appearance.
Who is the man in the photo album?
At one point in the film, an old photo album is found hidden inside the statue of the many-handed demon, which contains photographs of a man engaging in various gory rituals. It is suggested that this man was actually the owner of the hospital, who had developed a keen interest in the occult and had summoned the malevolent demon through numerous blood sacrifices and rituals, which can be seen in the photos. He had even gone to the extent of sacrificing babies and young children, who had been born at the hospital or had come there for treatment, in order to summon, and then appease the demon. It is most likely that he had summoned the demon seeking personal gain, and possibly even to ensure that his business grew exponentially. However, the man fell prey to his own greed, and his twisted plan of seeking help from the supernatural, resulting in the mysterious and unexpected deaths and malpractices at his hospital getting reported. Since the government had ordered the business to be shut down, it can be guessed that the owner was arrested and put in prison for his crimes, which is why he could never send the demon back to its realm. As a result, the demon continues to live in the hospital, waiting for humans to prey on, and even play around with, in the most cruel and violent manner.
What is the backstory of the killer nurse?
In the film, it is quite a well-known fact among ghost-hunters that Xinglin Hospital is haunted by the spirit of a nurse, who had murdered numerous young babies by injecting them with poison. This was apparently the reason behind the hospital’s high rate of infant mortality, which was one of the main reasons behind it getting shut down by the government. The nurse, Wu Shuzhen, was held responsible for the serial killings, and she was probably arrested and sentenced to death for her gruesome murders. It was stated that she had been experiencing extreme emotional breakdown, as a result of which she had committed the murders.
In the drawings made by the children, both the evil nurse with her syringe, and also the many-handed demon can be seen, which suggests that the children were aware, or had been told, of what would come to hunt them. However, when Shuzhen’s spirit actually starts haunting the characters, she can be heard shouting and questioning whether she was safe, which can mean multiple things. It is very likely that the spirit actually mimics Jane’s words from the beginning of the film, which she had said after the tarot reading. But it is also perhaps possible that Shuzhen was indeed suffering from an emotional breakdown which pushed her to the extent of committing serial infanticide. Her spirit, which has been cursed to stay on in the mortal realm, now seeks humans and haunts them in the hospital halls.
Another theory might suggest that Shuzhen was a victim of some crime or inappropriate behavior at her workplace as well, most probably at the hands of her boss, the owner of the hospital. It is well established that the owner was a cruel man, and perhaps he kept making Shuzhen feel uncomfortable and unsafe during her duty. A third possibility is that the children and the babies had been killed by either the owner, or more likely, the demon he had summoned, and the nurse had been framed for it. Either way, this mistreatment had turned Wu Shuzhen into a vengeful spirit after her death, which is why she keeps haunting the hospital to this day.
Was Lee Fung involved in the hauntings?
During Strange Frequencies’ ending, we see a horror content creator on TikTok shoot a new video about the live stream that Quen and his team had done from inside the hospital, and how the spirits at the place had claimed their lives in extremely mysterious ways. As he finishes shooting the video, the masked man picks up a pair of glasses from the table, and the glasses make it obvious that he is actually the tour guide, Lee Fung, who had taken the team to the hospital at the beginning of the film. Although Fung does not technically have any involvement in the hauntings and the paranormal incidents, he surely has a hand in the death of the celebrities.
Fung had actually paid the guard at the hospital to lock the place from the outside, which was not clear at the beginning, but became evident eventually. When the characters wanted to escape after having experienced the paranormal activities, he claimed that the guard could not be reached on his phone. However, as Fung completely disappeared from the place some time later, and then lived on to make TikTok videos, it is evident that he had called up the guard and escaped himself, before locking the others inside the building.
Even in his videos, Lee Fung dares ghost-hunters from all over the world to come to Xinglin Hospital to shoot content and survive the night, without actually revealing who he is. Naturally, he earns more and more when people come to Taiwan to visit the hospital, and hire him to be their guide for the trip. Therefore, Fung actually knows that the hospital is haunted for real, but instead of warning people, he capitalizes on the situation. The difference between him and Quen and his team is that the latter do not actually believe in the paranormal when they enter Xinglin, while Fung knows all about it and entraps them regardless. After all, their live stream being viewed by more than 3 million people means great business for him as well, as more people will now flock to the hospital.
How does Alexa survive?
In Strange Frequencies: Taiwan Killer Hospital’s ending, Alexa is seen crawling out of the hospital in the morning, and she is the only survivor of the paranormal ordeal. How exactly Alexa survives is left unclear, and she herself does not seem to know how she has been so lucky. In fact, Alexa had been pursued by a demonic spirit for a very long time, and she had even been dragged away by it a few minutes earlier, during the film’s climax. How she managed to escape remains a mystery, and we can only guess that the spirit had ultimately decided not to kill her, and to spare her instead. The only hint as to why this might have happened is that Alexa had been the only one, among all the characters, to have paid respect to the many-handed demon after they started exploring the hospital. Although Raf had warned her against doing so at the time, saying that she could be offending the spirits by offering her respect in the wrong way, Alexa seems to have actually done the right thing. Thus, she alone lives to tell the tale, and it is also clearly a glaring proof of the director’s intention to make a sequel to the film. Alexa will now continue with the “Strange Frequencies” show, and she might even return to investigate the deaths of her friends, and more importantly, looking for answers regarding the many mysteries at Xinglin Hospital.
