Karen Lam’s "The Curse of Willow Song" premieres at VIFF

Vancouver-based genre filmmaker Karen Lam’s third feature film, The Curse of  Willow Song, has debuted at the 2020 Vancouver International Film Festival, followed by the  Reelworld Film Festival in October. The horror feature is set in Lam’s home base, a city famous for its severe housing crisis. Through the lens of an Asian-Canadian ex-gang parolee, Lam delves into this hot topic of real estate and the associating racism issues that accompany it. 

The Curse of  Willow Song was adapted from a novella Lam wrote in 2017 as part of the annual National Novel Writing Month. Lam says the script unfolded over just four days in a “fever dream,” then re-worked shortly before filming. The story was inspired by a trip  Lam took to Portland, Oregon, where she interviewed female inmates who voluntarily fight fires.

“I thought, this is whose story I want to tell,” says Lam of one inmate who feared  parole, being clean for the first time and being separated from her drug-trafficking family. 

Combined with  her idea of a young woman in a haunted warehouse, as well as recollections from family friends who had immigrated, The Curse of Willow Song was created. 

For Lam, Willow is all of us—someone who struggles with internal monsters, who does the best with what they’ve got, and whose specific cultural heritage is reflected in their world view. Lam is passionate about creating complex female characters and has always written from the female perspective, merging character and concept from the outset to spin a story web where each affects the other. 

The Curse of Willow Song is Lam’s first project with a nearly all-Asian cast. As an Asian-Canadian and female filmmaker, she feels strongly about her responsibility in writing films that have representation, and creating characters as diverse from their inception, as opposed to their culture being layered on like a blanket. 

“I realized that if I wasn't giving opportunities to a diverse range of characters that we haven’t seen before, then I’m really allowing someone else to dictate what that worldview is,” Lam says. 

Inspired by 1960s Japanese samurai ghost films, the movie is shot in black and white. Lam says her love for Asian horror stems from the genre’s focus on story driven by characters—fatal flaws and all. The film, injected with a “little shot of  Lovecraft,” has a dreamy quality to it, a stillness to the shots, and evocative imagery. The sensation of claustrophobia is palpable and reflects both Willow’s mental state and Lam’s initial  feelings when she first moved to Vancouver from Manitoba.

 “I love the city now, but when I  first got here, I felt like I was suffocating from being trapped between the mountains and the sea.”

The film is very specific to Vancouver; from the seedy setting of the Downtown Eastside, where Willow first resides, to the real estate flipping aspect, which Lam closely follows. Through the story she seeks to portray an immigrant family who strives for  success—not merely survival. The film also addresses attitudes towards immigration in the city.

“We’re seeing the backlash around the world wherever Asian immigration affects housing prices, like a kind of nouveau colonialism,” says Lam. “It makes everyone uncomfortable, including Asians like me who were born and raised in Canada, and have to live in the financial shadow of this new reality.” 

On watching her completed film, Lam was struck by how it feels like “the right film at the right  time.” Between topical cultural relevance and the almost apocalyptic feel to the film, The Curse  of Willow Song may seem political to some. To Lam, it’s about a girl who haunts her  environment. 

Mid-pandemic, this is something we can all identify with.

Karen Lam is the recent recipient of the Best B.C. Film award for The Curse of Willow Song. The film is available for streaming through the VIFF online platform and will also have an in-cinema screening at the Cinematheque on Saturday October 3rd at 9:00pm.