Missing (2008) User Reviews

Reviewers Who Give This Film a 1/10 Are Going Way Too Far

[ebossert · 6/10 · 17 October 2008]

Angelica Lee and Isabella Leong investigate the enigmatic death of a loved one at sea in this film by Tsui Hark. The visuals and camera-work are excellent, with some cool sequences filmed underwater. (Seriously, the cinematography is exceptional.) The ghouls are very unusual and are "touched up" with some CGI. The storyline is very engaging, with multiple elements introduced to keep the viewer off balance. Some have criticized the film for being schizophrenic, but this method of storytelling is actually effective, interesting, and adds some unpredictability. The romantic elements are on the cheesy side, but this film simply does not deserve the abuse it has taken from online reviewers. It maintains interest from start to finish; and sometimes that's good enough.

I normally wouldn't bother writing a review for a film I rate a 6/10, but the sheer level of abuse this film has received from IMDb reviewers is surprising. "Missing" is so unpretentious and harmless that I question how someone in their right mind could hate the film to the degree of giving it a 1/10 rating. Then again, these are the same people who gave Jet Li's pretentious, over-dramatic fluff piece "The Warlords" (2007) a 10/10 (as well as Woo's pathetic "Red Cliff") – so maybe I'm expecting a little too much individuality when dealing with the bandwagon jumpers that infest IMDb. In all honesty, I find that the average ratings on this website have become almost completely useless.

After calling "Missing" a complete mess, one reviewer claimed that only those who liked "Diary" (2006) could buy into this movie. This was an obvious attempt to indirectly trash both films by drawing a parallel between two "convoluted" story lines with "copout" endings. One can only assume that this guy has no idea what he's talking about. "Diary" is a masterpiece of horror cinema that is on a level far higher than that of "Missing." The twists and turns in "Diary" are well-executed with little in terms of ambiguity; almost every single event is adequately explained. "Missing", on the other hand, includes a twist that tosses a good portion of the film into subjective interpretation. I say this in defense of "Diary" so that readers understand that the comparison is completely unwarranted and misguided.

I do find it ironic that overpraised directors like David Lynch can operate within a universe where virtually everything is tossed up to subjective interpretation, yet receive heaping amounts of praise for being original and innovative. How is this any different from what Tsui Hark does in "Missing"? Sure, the big twist that's revealed during the latter third of the film basically forces the viewer to interpret the preceding events in a symbolic light, but some of it does have very specific psychological meaning. That still leaves the final third of the film to operate within objective reality, which is far more than what Lynch provided in the abhorrent "Eraserhead." So what's the problem? "Missing" is not nearly as weird as "Eraserhead", but it sure makes a LOT more sense, yet it somehow is excluded from receiving credit for using ambiguity to provoke thought and introduce originality. I'm not understanding this double standard.

Now, I'm not saying that "Missing" is a great film. It's got some healthy doses of cheesiness and some of the events that take place during the opening hour may not hold up well after a second viewing, but there is a constant aura of interest that is maintained from start to finish – which is more than one can say for the seemingly endless barrage of carbon-copy Chinese historical epics like "The Warlords" and "Three Kingdoms" that quite frankly have NO originality, NO enjoyability, NO artistic integrity, and NO purpose for existing other than to ape Hollywood with soulless garbage masked behind a veil of massive budgets.

I'll take a film like "Missing" over those pathetic projects any day of the week. I may not recommend a blind buy, but a rental with reasonable expectations is not something to run away from.

Imbalance Under Technology Addiction - Review of "Missing"

[kampolam-75813 · 5/10 · 23 January 2023]

Tsui Hark has been dormant for three years since "Seven Swords" (2005). During this period, he directed one third of "Triangle" (2007) with two good friends and directors, Ringo Lam Ling-Tung and Johnnie To Kei-Fung. In 2008, he released two films, "Missing" and "All About Women", the interesting thing is that both films feature women as the protagonists. "Missing" is a suspenseful horror film starring Angelica Lee Sinje and Isabella Leong, and "All About Women" is a suspenseful thriller starring three famous actresses in Mainland China, Zhou Xun, Gwei Lun-Mei and Zhang Yuqi, the strong lineup of female stars.

"Missing" doesn't change the true nature of Tsui Hark's films, and takes the development of new technologies and shooting environments as the driving force for his creation. This time, in his self-report, Tsui Hark rarely narrates his film personally. The documentary of an ancient city in the deep sea of Ryukyu Island in the west of the archipelago gave Tsui Hark the idea of making this film. The film was shot with the latest high-definition camera, and a Japanese cinematographer Sakamoto Yoshitaka to take care of it. In the deep-sea cinematography part, because the actor Guo Xiaodong was unable to shoot in Taiwan, the scene where Guo Xiaodong and Angelica Lee met while diving was actually shot from two different seabeds, and then edited by adjusting the color temperature and luminosity in post-processing.

The interesting thing about the film is that when the story reaches two-thirds, Tsui Hark solves the mystery. It's another variation of "The Sixth Sense" (1999), but Tsui Hark isn't willing to end the film here. Perhaps in order to comply with the film censorship standards in Mainland China, he had to solve the mystery in advance. Following the last third of the film, it describes how Gao Jing (played by Angelica Lee) recovers her memory and misses her lover Dave Chen Guo-Dong (played by Guo Xiaodong), while Isabella Leong plays Dave Chen's sister Chen Xiao-Kai. When she finds out that her brother's death is related to Gao Jing, Isabella Leong's performance failed to deduce that complex and multi-layered psychological state. As for Angelica Lee's re-starring in a horror film, it can be said that she is familiar with it, and she has more room to play after the mystery is revealed. To a certain extent, the film satisfies the director's desire to pursue new technologies, but the film fails to achieve the expected effect of a horror film.

By Kam Po LAM (original in Chinese)

Bold if messy ghost story

[DanTheMan2150AD · 5/10 · 30 October 2023]

Diving deep into the emotional longevity of what grief can inflict on an individual, Missing does not feel like a Tsui Hark film, as it's so far removed from his style. Mixing traditional supernatural beliefs with a psychological character study, Hark spins a tangled, often confusing web that while laudable doesn't quite sustain his ambitions. It instead offers a hodge-podge of genres ranging from psychological ghostly horrors to melodramatic romance, the very idea of the film is exciting but it has too many ingredients that ultimately leave it as a very messy piece of work, often looking hurriedly shot and put together almost as if it was made in a mad rush of a creative spark. It drags its feet to a rather unsatisfactory conclusion of multiple endings, feeling way longer than its advertised 2-hour runtime. Thankfully in the years, Hark's direction has remained steadfast and enjoyable, backed up by a passable score by Ricky Ho, Missing ultimately just misses the mark for me in its attempt to try so much, though the effort involved is commendable, the results are not.

Schizophrenic

[harry_tk_yung · 17 June 2008]

ADDITIONAL SPOILER WARNING

It's a double irony: it has been suggested in the movie that the protagonist Dr KO Tsing, a psychiatrist, is schizophrenic, something that can be said about the movie itself which cannot quite make up its mind whether to be a love story or a horror thriller. Actually, there shouldn't be a problem for a movie to be both but here the two elements repel each other like oil and water. Another flaw is that there is such a proliferation of borrowed ideas that it compels you to wonder where the originality of director Tsui Hark has gone.

The openings scenes are delightfully lucid, an elegant depiction of how a young women CHAN Siu-hoi (Isabella Leung) brings together her photographer brother Kwok-tung and Tsing, both dedicated professionals who have little time for romance but a common interest in diving. As the relationship develops and blossoms, we see the three planning a diving trip to explore a sunken, mysterious ancient kingdom.

Abruptly, the next shot brings us to a desolate funeral as we learn that Kwok-tung had died underwater in the adventure while Tsing has had a partial loss of memory of what happened. What ensues, the main body of the movie, is a psychological thriller with an "I see dead people" diversion, and also a distinct "Ghost" (1990) flavour. As the array of mysteries and twists are gradually disentangled, we are finally handed an overriding twist that is not unlike the cop out in movies like "Vanilla sky" (2001). What you've seen in this entire segment is only in Tsing's mind. The accident did happen, but the rest is what she constructs in her mind to try to explain everything.

In the third and final segment, we see how Tsing, discharged from the psychiatric hospital and under the care of Siu-hoi, has completely lost her memory. Here, we see a remarkable resemblance to "Floating landscape" (2003) which depicts how a women whose fiancé had died of illness goes to his home town to look for a landscape of white blossoms that he had loved, and in the process discovers more about him. Here, Tsing needs to re-discover Kwok-tung from square one, and the landscape here is "feng loi" ("paradise" in Chinese), in a photograph taken from inside his small hideaway cabin on an idyllic beach, focusing on a small island in the middle of the ocean.

The thriller part of the movie is somewhat contrived. The love story should have been better, particularly with the good performance of Angelica Lee, but suffers from lacking a sufficient development before the man dies, as you see in "Ghost". Angelica Lee did as much as anybody could, and the beautiful music (particularly the theme song) helps. In the end, this movie brings flashes of ideas and scenes that remind you of what director Tsui can do, but is on the whole a disappointment.

A Nutshell Review: Missing

[DICK STEEL · 1/10 · 14 June 2008]

I hate to make such a statement, but until I see something better from him, I think Tsui Hark has lost his Midas Touch. He had given us wonderful movies, some of which are my personal favourites like the Once Upon A TIme in China series starring Jet Li, and the Blade, but in his attempt to register a more prolific comeback after his less than stellar stab at Hollywood, his recent filmography had blown hot and cold, with more misses save for his collaboration in Triangle. Missing unfortunately falls into the Stinker category.

No doubt there's a ton of potential as to how the story could develop, given the teases in the trailer, but what was delivered happened to be a convoluted plot which made very little sense and became extremely indecisive, like an octopus putting its tentacles into every conceivable nook and cranny genre ranging from supernatural romance to psychological thriller, that if it had stuck to one primary idea, it might have been fairly enjoyable.

Unfortunately, it seemed like Hark wanted to ape after the contemporary Asian horror masters in the Pang Brothers from technique in storytelling, right down to casting one of their regular lead actress Angelica Lee as the role of Dr Gao Jin, a psychologist who hits it off with underwater photographer Dave Chen (Guo Xiao Dong), the brother of her patient Xiao Kai (Isabella Leong). A whirlwind romance ensues and in Dave's bid to propose to his beau underwater near the ruins off Japan's Yonaguni Island (which you don't get to see at all), tragedy strikes, but we don't get to see what actually happened, providing the avenue for mysterious flashbacks and investigations into what was.

But there's when most of the 2 hour runtime seem to find itself stuck in, coming up with so many subplots they get dumped unceremoniously when they no longer fit the whim of the moment. You get some outright statements on ecology and the saving of our oceans, then you get some spooky scenes with mysterious figures and spirits trying to garner some cheap scares. Granted these are the moments which were suspense filled and the audience let on to expect further exploration at a later time, only to be disappointed by its lack of focus no thanks to wanting to experiment with some fiery special effects. Just when you think you got the hang of things, Missing throws you totally off tangent with yet another major revelation almost two-thirds of the way, in what I would deem as a cheap cop-out, where further explanation would spoil it for you.

Suffice to say that if you like the Pang Brothers' Diary, then you might buy into Missing. Otherwise, you'll begin to roll your eyes and clock watch, as the story begins to suffer from its now unbelievable and much scattered design, and relied too much on coincidence to move everything forward toward a finale that just seem to not know when to end. And that was its ultimate flaw. It had plenty of moments when to pull the plug to mitigate the suffering of an audience, but no, it dragged on, and on, with each moment building on the ridiculousness of the previous minutes.

In all honesty, I understood Tsui Hark's intentions in attempting to bring out a more emotional film about love and lost, especially toward the end when it realized it had burnt the bridges to salvage something horrific. In its lazy presentation in not knowing what to edit and leave out of the story, Missing felt just like one of the props in the movie, a headless body without any clear direction where to go towards. I thought it had hit the nail on the head during one of the many endings, but realized this last ditch attempt was wasted when it still refused to roll the end credits.

And no matter how much pedigree Angelica Lee has brought from her reigning Scream- Queen experience, somehow it was just that which turns out to be the albatross around her neck, as she offers nothing new from her range of expressions in movies like The Eye, and Re-cycle, other than look visibly aged. Isabella Leong doesn't fare any better too with her character as she turns vampish in her role when she returns to the incident site to seek out her brother, and Tony Leung Kar Fai and Chang Chen had only supporting roles to bookend the movie. The latter's role was surprisingly the better one as a soft-spoken man with a penchant for predicting the supernatural, but alas is one character that is forgotten soon enough.

Final verdict? Watch Missing at your own peril. It does boast some very few moments of genuine horror, and nicely done special effects, before surrendering everything to slip- shoddy storytelling. The more subplots it dwelled upon, the more loopholes managed to creep into it, making the title a premonition of what the movie is actually all about - missing everything needed to make this a decent movie.

Messy, Boring and Melodramatic Never-ending Ghost Story

[claudio_carvalho · 2/10 · 10 January 2010]

In Hong Kong, Dr. Gao Jing (Lee Sinje) is introduced to the brother of her best girlfriend Chen Xiao Kai (Isabella Leong), the photographer and diver Dave Chen Guo Dong (Guo Xiao Dong). They fall in love for each other and Guo Dong invites Gao Jing to travel to Taiwan to visit an ancient submarine city, where he intends to propose her. During the dive, Guo Dong vanishes and his headless body is found later while Gao Jing cannot recall what happened underwater. She decides to investigate and a bleak mystery is disclosed.

"Sam Hoi Tsam Yan" is a messy, boring and melodramatic never-ending ghost story. The screenplay is awful, with many ridiculous twists where nothing is what seems to be. This movie is so terrible that gives the sensation that will never end. The only good point is the wonderful cinematography. The absurd plot in IMDb is totally wrong. My vote is two.

Title (Brazil): "Mergulho Fatal" ("Fatal Dive")

The only thing "Missing" is 2 hours of my life now

[la_resistance28 · 1/10 · 12 July 2008]

I thought maybe the IMDb score of "5" was a mistake. And I was correct. "5" is much too generous a score for such an absolute waste of my time. The plot focuses on a female psychiatrist whose undersea photographer boyfriend mysteriously died during a recent dive, and she has to deal with the aftermath of his strange death. There are far too many plot holes, cheap scares, and suspensions of disbelief to allow you to even tolerate the movie. When you're not rolling your eyes or checking your watch, you'll probably be tearing your hair out at the ridiculousness of it all. For example, *SPOILER ALERT* a good third of the movie takes place inside the head of one of the crazy characters, and when the director reveals that it as "it was all just a dream"... well, you realize you're not getting any of that part of your life back. I give it one star for some decently-shot underwater scenes and pretty fish. But then again, I can get that sort of stuff as part of my screen-saver already, so why bother? Please STAY AWAY from this awful, awful excuse for a movie.

A mess

[dbborroughs · 3/10 · 20 December 2008]

Woman is left to pick up the pieces after her photographer boyfriend goes missing and is discovered dead on a working vacation that was to be the time he proposed to her.There are questions as to whether the body is his and she begins to try and unravel what had happened to her boyfriend.

Strange and pretty much a mess of a film bounces through time and space as the woman begins to have visions and relive past events. I think. Frankly I'm not sure what the hell was going on.Certainly the events make for some great looking images, but the plot is not really clear. I kind of lost interest about half way in and just kind of went with it hoping for an "ah ha" moment that would make it all make sense and make me want to back it up and try again. It never happened. I know many people who dislike the film are calling it further proof of the directorial ability of Tsui Hark. I'm not so sure partly because some of the sequences work beautifully, but more because Hark has never been a great director. To be certain he's directed some great, or near great films (Peking Opera Blues, We're going to Eat You, Butterfly Murders), but for the most part he is a better producer than a director (He produced John Woo's Better Tomorrow films and Bullet in the Head, The Chinese Ghost Story films among others). I don't think he's declined as a director. I just think he picked a poor script.

Meant for audience who are new to movies and maybe for kids !!

[moviesbest · 19 June 2008]

I don't mean to be insulting with my title but to have such a movie from a veteran director of close to 30 years and whose name have been big in HK during the 80's, I guess he must have make this movie for these 2 selected groups of audience.(I will explain later in the SPOILERS part). Yes, we know this director Tsui Hark has been making remakes or following others' box office successes formulas since the 80s and most of his recent movies have been flops. This movie give me the impression that the Tsui Hark & wife team knew the movie will not turn out well but they enjoyed the producer job. In HK cinema, producers control the fund and expenses. So the more complicated the script and more the scenes mean better money-making opportunity for the producers. The reason I guess so is all the unnecessary subplots and "extended endings" actually made the movie worse. The movie has hardly anything original. We get to see too many scenes(see SPOILERS) and ideas copied(lacking the style and class) from HK's recent years' 4 best horror, 3 from the Pang Brothers' "Eye 1 & 2", "Re-Cycle" & Leslie Cheung's last movie, "Inner Senses", and of course, Hollywood's "Ghost". This is the reason why I mentioned it's great for those who are new to movies and the reason why for kids is the logic and concept of the movie is totally out !!(see SPOILERS). Another major flaw if this movie is the dialogue. Just like his previous Chat Gim, TH is not sure of the dialogue. There are too many times dialogue changed and dubbing has been used, making the scenes very unnatural. Most obvious are the opening scenes in this movie. At the end we a get a movie which is a mix of romance, mystery, horror & thriller. As usual in all Tsui Hark's movie, we get some messages that is irrelevant to the story and in this case laughable(see SPOILERS). The only thing worth seeing is the deep ocean idea but matured audience have seen it in "The Deep". The result is like a salad dish with too many types vegetables(mostly stale), served with Japanese sauce, on a Chinese porcelain bowl. Will you like it ?

***WARNING:SPOILERS***(Read only if you are sure you will not watch it)

1)Nearly all the ghostly scenes are copied from Eye 1 & Eye 2 - 4 scenes in a row of 2 minutes here - Ghost behind Angelica in elevator, hungry ghost eating at a restaurant, lonely ghost in bedroom, ghost coming down from ceiling. 2)This is supposed to be a mystery thriller but Hark throw in a GHOSTLY part which turned out to be totally the character's imagination. For such a concept which is overused in Asian movies, I am sure many better ideas for subplots but don't understand why yet so many mistakes. The first ghostly scene where the funeral caretakers carrying the ghost is out-of -logic. It's a scene not seen by the character and in fact many more.So such scenes should not appear. 3)Angelica Lee's character and idea is directly out of Leslie Cheung in "Inner Senses". 4)Just too many "coincidental" happenings to tie up the loose ends to end the story. Most obvious being the sister "accidently" left the camcorder in someone else' house, placed it on a shelf such that it "accidentally" shakes to drop the recorder when she closed the door. The tape dropped out. Look, it's a high class condo, how could the other wall shakes ? She came back for it but 3rd "accidentally" the person(1 out of 4) who knew where it was placed must be "coincidently" just out for lunch. My maths told me for this whole incident to happen, the chance is 1 out of over a million, in fact, impossible. 5) The love story part is of course, "Ghost" 6) The humanity part is out of "Re-Cycle". 7) The ending message on "environmental safeguarding" which has nothing to do with the story is a big joke !!