There Is a Secret in My Soup (2001) User Reviews

Unpleasant fact based tale of a life cut short in a most horrifying manner

[dbborroughs · 5/10 · 6 August 2005]

Told in mostly in flashback this film is about the police investigation into the remains that are found in an apartment, and more to the point a Hello Kitty Mermaid which has been optically censored out of the film because Sanrio was unhappy. (This is based on a true story and parts of the woman really were found in the Hello Kitty doll.) What we find out is that the victim was a girl who made a wrong turn and life and the downward spiral lead to prostitution and worse. It all ends after she steals some money and she's brutalized to the point of death. The killers then dispose of the body in the title manner.

This is a really unpleasant film. Its low budget adds a grittiness to to it. With in its limited budget its not a bad looking film which adds to the nastiness. The trouble is that the script is a meandering mess going from unpleasant person to unpleasant situation.We get to see more than we ever wanted about the lives of everyone involved. The only one you really feel for is Maggie, but even then you grow weary waiting for the inevitable. On some level I feel that the director's desire to do something with the story clashed with budget concerns and a need to make an exploitive film that would return its cost and so they ended up with a film thats neither socially relevant nor good exploitation.

I don't like this movie much. Granted it gets points for provoking a reaction of horror and disgust, but at the same time it shouldn't be coupled with the question "Why are you watching this then?". What bothers me about the film is that I'm intrigued with it as close representation of what really happened. Its ghoulish, but it won't allow me to totally dismiss the film even though I really should. I can't recommend it since it is a really ugly movie, but its there if you want to try it, although you'll probably question why you're watching it.

Rated 5 out of 10 because I'm so conflicted about the movie even though it should probably be lower.

BUNMAN 2001? Don't think so!

[Manji · 5/10 · 26 January 2002]

Where do I begin with this one???

It opens with the crime scene...the location where something horrific and unbelievable has just happened. Something so disturbing that you just have to find out what it is and how it happened.

Through the flashbacks of the only surviving occupants of this apartment of death, we are treated to the whole story as it unfolds. Initially, it is realistic and true to life. It's the story of an unloved young woman turning to prostitution for something, anything different from her uncaring relationship. We've seen this story before, this character who wants such a significant change in her life that she soon discovers that she is in a place that she never wishes she knew. In these terms the film is utterly and remarkably hardcore. We are treated her breakdown and abuse at the hands of those people who she has grown accustom to. If you don't feel for this girl as you watch then you don't have blood pumping through your veins, you're just another machine. It's done properly, this isn't some goofy film to be taken lightly. But then something happens that is obviously unplanned as her abuse at the hands of her torturers spirals out of control.

All the right reasons are here for her character to become more real, fantastically handled by Chiu Chiu Chan, Maggie is a character that is at the bottom of the barrel. She can't go back to the life she once had, nobody loves her there. But at the same time she can't leave her captors who have found something more rewarding in Maggie than pimping her out. She owes them money and they have her hooked on drugs. She's tried to leave them on more than one occasion only to be beaten viciously upon each recapture. She's like many women that find themselves in a situation so horrible. Perhaps it's because this is the only place where she gets attention or maybe it's because she is too dependent on the drugs and the freedom from her newly born child. but we don't truly learn her reasons for staying. She doesn't get a voice to explain how she feels or a person to confide in. Then IT happens, I don't want to ruin what occurs at the lowest point (in the film and in the depravity of the torturers) but rest assured it's at the same time disturbing and unnecessarily wrong! The thing that just killed the movie for me was the reaction of the torturers as they do what they do. It's so hard to believe that they do some unspeakable things to Maggie simply because they can! In the end the characters just feel like they are doing it because they know an audience is watching them, which is so silly! As movie-goers we want to watch a movie as if a hidden camera has been dropped into the life/surroundings of the characters. What a cheat, especially after the superior BUNMAN.

It's nice to see Micheal Wong working still, unfortunately his character did diddly to move the story along. As the lead detective on the case he didn't really do alot of pushing for answers. Everyone involved was so cooperative considering what they had done. it's a shame this film copped out the way that it did. Just find BUNMAN, atleast that has some sense of consistency

There's a reason why this flick was made, to fill shelf space!

The worst of boring crap

[fertilecelluloid · 1/10 · 5 April 2005]

Lazy, unfocused, inept film-making from director Yeung Chi Gin. Supposedly based on a true story, it sabotages any opportunity it may have had with patented cluelessness.

It's arguable that it never had a screenplay. Everything that happens is so random and linear. Chiu Chiu Chan (Maggie) steals money and a lighter from a girlfriend's husband (a gangster) to pay for her mother's operation. When the husband finds out, he begins to subject her to non-stop abuse. The abuse, ultimately, leads to her demise.

The flashback structure (ala DR. LAMB, UNTOLD STORY, etc.) provides a sloppy hook to hang a narrative on. Told from the perspective of several miscreants who participated in Maggie's demise, it provides for a choppy, uneven experience.

What truly capsizes THERE IS A SECRET IN MY SOUP is amateurishness. There is no atmosphere, style or intelligence at work here. The film is a simple exercise in cynical commerce.

The abuse scenes look more like charades than reality and the performances are wildly uneven. Two scenes, in which Miss Chin dances "seductively" for one of the criminals, are totally out of context and ludicrous. What were the producers of this mess thinking? Boring crap.

A test for Hello Kitty of the proposition that any publicity is good publicity

[peternepstad · 2/10 · 28 August 2010]

If there is one thing you used to be able rely on Hong Kong exploitation cinema for, it is gruesome, ripped-from-the-headlines video nasties (often, inexplicably, starring Michael Wong). This time, a bunch of punks kidnap a girl, torture her, rape her, kill her accidentally, then stuff her remains in a Hello Kitty doll. The Hello Kitty copyright owners were none to amused by all the screen time the doll was getting, however. Since the film was already in the can, the doll is simply digitally scrambled whenever it is on screen. There is something incredibly ironic about watching full frontal nudity and brutal, bloody violence in full color, while behind the mayhem and to the left sits a little fogged stuffed animal. The same true crime also inspired the (even worse) film HUMAN PORK CHOP from the same year.

Hello Kitty murder.

[HumanoidOfFlesh · 6/10 · 11 September 2010]

"There Is A Secret in My Soup" is based on infamous HK crime case called 'Hello Kitty Murder'.In 1999 three triad gangsters kidnapped,brutally tortured and beat a 23-year old woman named Fan Man-yee for one month until she died.Then they dismembered and cooked the body,threw most of it out with the trash,fed legs and arms to stray dogs and hid the skull inside the head of a giant-sized Hello Kitty doll."Human Pork Chop" tells the story of a young woman,who steals money and can't repay her loan.She is captured,tortured and degraded by her pimp and his crew,then killed and dismembered."There Is A Secret in My Soup" is an ugly and unsettling film,but not as grimly effective as "Human Pork Chop".Optically censored images of Hello Kitty doll add a lot of strangeness to cynical atmosphere of it.6 out of 10.

Check this out, exploitation fans!

[mindseye100 · 7/10 · 6 July 2002]

This film is based VERY closely to real events in a homicide that took place in Hong Kong the year before the film came out. The mermaid Hello-kitty in the film, that the killers store the victims skull in after they've finished torturing her and cutting up her corpse, is identical to the mermaid Hello-kitty doll that the real killers used in the exact same way. (Note: In the non-theatrical versions of the film *dvd, vcd*, Sanrio demanded that the film makers digitally fog the doll. This aspect makes the film even more strange!)

This is a disturbing film and a very memorable experience, that is all the more insane and outrageous when you take into account that it actually happened.

Another film, "HUMAN PORKCHOP" was made around the same time, and is based on the same case, although it takes a few more liberties with the story.