If there’s one thing I can’t turn down, it’s a new time travel (or time loop) movie. Especially one with spooky ghosts! Haunted Mountains: The Yellow Taboo recently celebrated its International Premiere at the 2025 Fantasia Film Festival, which has for years now been my secret weapon in discovering new Asian cinema. Chia-Ying Tsai’s Taiwanese Horror, directing from a screenplay by Wan-Zhen Zou, plays with the time-loop subgenre in ways that make a tired, old plot device interesting and original again, And best of all, it’s loop is under the cruel control of some really shitty ghosts that want nothing more than to watch people suffer over and over and over again.
Haunted Mountains: The Yellow Taboo stars Jasper Liu as Jia-ming Chen, a hopeless romantic whose marriage proposal to his girlfriend Yu-xin Song (Angela Yuen) is constantly getting wedlock blocked by spooky forest ghost in a yellow raincoat. The pair are avid hikers but after a fateful trip into the mountains changes their lives forever, Jia-ming Chen finds himself stuck in a never-ending nightmare, reliving the same day with no end in sight. Which would be nice and all if he proposed, she said yes and they fell asleep peacefully in each other’s arms. Instead, Jia-ming Chen watches Yu-xin Song die day after day in increasingly horrifying ways.
What’s brilliant about Haunted Mountains: The Yellow Taboo is that it doesn’t waste any time pretending this is the first time loop movie you’ve seen. As soon as Jia-ming Chen realizes he’s reliving the same day, we montage out another 100 days and pick up where most time loop movies end. And in another genius turn, Jia-ming Chen finds a second person who’s stuck in her own time loop, also repeating the same 24 hour window! Along the way we have some pretty brutal death sequences, a fun midpoint exorcism, and some dark discoveries of how their fates are all tied together. It’s not a perfect balancing act of all these elements, but (again) Time Bending narratives are my jam.
One obvious sore spot for a lot of viewers is the film’s effects. The ghosts have a blurred, almost out-of-focus look to them. Not unlike how most people describe seeing ghosts in real life but it does stand out against an otherwise crisp picture. In fact, it’s the first complaint you’ll see on the majority of the film’s Letterboxd reviews. I’m willing to forgive effects for a good story (even if it’s one that waffles a bit as it finds its footing in the 3rd act), so if you’re as obsessed with time bending movies as I am there’s still a lot to like here. All things considered, Haunted Mountains: The Yellow Taboo is a spooky twist on the Groundhog Day formula that doesn’t waste your time with all the boring discovery and disbelief that every American time loop story is still holding onto.
“What’s brilliant about Haunted Mountains: The Yellow Taboo is that it doesn’t waste any time pretending this is the first time loop movie you’ve seen.”
Chia-Ying Tsai’s Haunted Mountains: The Yellow Taboo celebrated its International Premiere at the 2025 Fantasia Internal Film Festival. Click HERE to follow our continued coverage of the fest, and let us know if you’ve ever seen a ghost over in The Official Nightmare on Film Street Discord! Social Media is A Cesspool. Come Hang Where All The Cool Creeps Are.
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