Very nearly the entire movie, is a near-death hallucination—a sort of An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge–style interlude.

      Now the brilliance of using this as a device, is absolutely extraordinary—and it allows the director, to create a serious movie, around a . . . somewhat silly, genre, namely: Jiangshi fiction.

      This is completely remarkable.

      And the film all but spoon-feeds one this–the presence, and absence of the hand drawn watch—the differences in ages of the son–and yet, no one seems to get this.  One has a completely different experience with the film, with just this one piece of information—and that is what makes this, a must-see movie.