Legend says that the house became haunted after the end of the Chinese Communist Revolution in 1949, when the wife of a Kuomintang official who once lived there committed suicide.
81 on Chaoyangmennei Street in Beijing, follows Xu Ruoqing (Ruby Lin), a woman whose presence in the notorious mansion draws up the spirits that have taken residence there.
[6] She has recently moved in with their daughter to the mansion with Zhao Yitang (Francis Ng), the boss of a publication company publishing Xu Ruoqing's novels.
After being locked in the coffin with her newly-wed and deceased husband, Huo Lianqi rushes back to the house upon hearing of the news that she was married to his second brother.
The scene cuts back to the past, where Lu Dieyu was shown to be pregnant with Huo Lianqi's child on the night of their consummation.
Feeling a mix of emotions of guilt, fear and insecurity, Xu Ruoqing turned to her old friend, who is also a psychologist (Qin Hailu) for consultation on her current situation.
Her visions in the house did not go away, her daughter came to her one night to ask her for help in catching a red butterfly, where she was led to the basement of the mansion where Lu Dieyu stayed during her pregnancy.
Unable to cope with Huo Lianqi's death, Lu Dieyu killed herself in the basement while wearing her red wedding dress.
In the present, Zhao Yitang has been called by his wife where he was given the option of having a cheque with a huge funds to save his career, only if he agrees to tear up the divorce papers.
Gen turned the wheelchair around, only to reveal the decomposed body of Huo Lianqi, and chased Zhao Yitang's family out of the mansion.
The film has inspired hordes of Beijingers to make the trek to Chaoyangmen Inner Street in the city's downtown area where the notorious Chanonei No.
[12] Following the film's release, up to 500 people per day were visiting the dilapidated and abandoned three-story town house built in 1910 as a Chinese language school for foreign missionaries.
In the absence of a film classification system in China, a cinema in Xinjiang province has taken the bold step of introducing its own in-house ratings scheme to shield children from inappropriate movies after their childish cries of fear disturbed other cinema-goers.
Since Aug. 3, the Urumqi branch of the China Film theater chain has started rating movies shown on its six screens, including "G" (all ages admitted) or "PG-13" (parents strongly cautioned; some material may be inappropriate for children under 13).
[19] The six screen complex, part of state-owned China Film Group’s nationwide circuit, recently issued a ‘PG-13’ advisory to The House That Never Dies.