‘Haunted Mountains: The Yellow Taboo’ Review – Time Loop Ghost Story Gets Lost in Woods [Fantasia 2025]

The latest horror movie to emerge from Taiwan, in the wake of films like Dead Talents Society and The Sadness, draws inspiration from one of Taiwan’s creepiest urban legends. To its credit, Haunted Mountains: The Yellow Taboo doesn’t take the most obvious path when it comes to centering a supernatural story around the Yushan Xiaofeixia, yellow raincoat-wearing ghosts who point lost hikers to a foggy path before vanishing. Director Tsai Chia Ying, making his feature debut, instead uses the urban legend to unfurl a time loop nightmare to mixed results.

The Yellow Taboo introduces Chia Ming (Jasper Liu) and Yu Hsin (Angela Yuen), a couple so bonded by hiking that Chia Ming plans to propose on their latest trip into the mountainside. Chia Ming’s chosen proposal location harbors more memories for the couple than simply romance, though; it’s also the place where his best friend and Yu Hsin’s former lover, An Wei (Tsao Yu Ning), mysteriously went missing. But the big day derails when the couple encounters a hooded figure in a yellow raincoat, who silently ushers them further into the woods, where Yu Hsin meets her demise, trapping Chia Ming in a twisted time loop that forces him to relive his lover’s death over and over.

It’s a novel twist to the standard ghost story that distracts enough from the familiar earmarks. Early telegraphed supernatural scares give way to the mind-bending mystery surrounding Chia Ming’s trapped plight. Also serving as a distraction is Wan-Zhen Zou‘s increasingly convoluted script, designed to keep audiences on their toes to prevent them from connecting clues until the plot is ready. Combined with Tsai Chia Ying’s not-quite-linear direction, The Yellow Taboo overcomplicates its rather straightforward narrative to the point of getting as lost in the woods as the core couple.

Jasper Liu’s performance as the hopeful fiancée becomes the throughline, helping viewers navigate the dense dog, ghostly visions, and repeating death loops. Chia Ming must dig into his past as well as the present, poring over his history with Yu Hsin in search of ways to escape this temporal nightmare. That The Yellow Taboo drops us into a cold open before skipping ahead to the inciting trip, leaving little room to get acquainted with key players, the time loop format only further distances the protagonists from audiences. Liu’s so thoroughly invested in Chia Ming’s ardent love for Yu Hsin that he mostly succeeds in instilling rooting interest despite narrative shortcomings, especially when it comes to the film’s final exposition-heavy reveals.

That director Tsai Chia Ying finds inventive ways to dispatch Yu Hsin, expanding the setting from the woods and raising visual interest in the process, brings a sense of fun that further differentiates The Yellow Taboo from standard urban legend ghost fare. But it doesn’t lean into its Groundhog Day setup enough, nor the raincoat figures lurking in the seemingly cursed mountains. That’s probably for the better when it comes to the latter; the folkloric entities themselves are noticeable VFX that can sometimes detract from the atmosphere.

Haunted Mountains: The Yellow Taboo follows in the tradition of hugely successful urban legend-inspired horror movie The Tag-Along, but with a new hook and mechanics meant to set it apart from conventional supernatural tales of its ilk. While it does indeed stand out in a crowded field, it’s just as opaquely foggy in its storytelling as the eerie woods in which it’s set.

Haunted Mountains: The Yellow Taboo screened at the Fantasia International Film Fest. Release info TBD.

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