消失的她 Lost in the Stars (2022)

[halfcactus]

Starring: Janice Man, Ni Ni, and Zhu Yilong.

Psychological thriller/action movie set in, uh, "Barlandia", a fictional and vaguely Southeast Asian country. The other SEA countries are simply "a Southeast Asian country" and "another Southeast Asian country", which I guess was somewhat prudent...? It's partially based on the film/play Trap for a Lonely Man (which I haven't seen/read), and partially based on a real case involving a Chinese couple in Thailand.

General thoughts:
The best part (and the part I would recommend, even though they are, in the grand scheme of things, just crumbs) is in the last twenty minutes, but it takes way too long to get there because it's framed in the least enjoyable POV for me. I was NOT interested in the mystery, or the mental/emotional state of Zhu Yilong's character, or the conspiracy. The longer they prolonged the reveal, the less satisfying it became because the tension felt too forced and the "twists" weren't even particularly creative or surprising ones. The experience was, to me, a lot of fake suspense and too much suspension of disbelief. And it was generally just very extra about everything–—I personally loved the insert songs/mini-music videos and the ending theme, but some of the musical and cinematic choices tried too hard without really putting together a cohesive experience. The rest of it is pretty, though.


More personal thoughts:
It carries certain stereotypes about SEA in ways that I think are typical of East Asian countries——in the sense that one can expect themselves or their loved ones being human trafficked by syndicates, culminating in Ni Ni's character saying, "Welcome to Southeast Asia." This is a line that kiiiiiiind of, if you squint, works narratively in the context of Ni Ni's character and motivations, and the fear-mongering is brief, but like many of the movie's choices, it detracts from rather than adding to the experience. In retrospect, I think that scene might be more to elevate the sense of horror in the target audience.

In fact, it's one of the two narrative choices that play with weird stereotypes to no justifiable end. The other one is (highlight to read detail that's revealed at the beginning) mental illness (dressed up as a neurological condition caused by too much scuba diving). As it stands, I think this movie is too silly for me to take anything about it seriously.

There were other details that I found laughable in how rote they felt, but turned out to be details from the real case, conveniently??? Specifically: (highlight for mid-movie reveal) gambling addiction and (highlight for ending spoiler) surprise pregnancy (which did not stop the character from going scubadiving anyway...?). The latter is even done for ~emotional effect~, which didn't really work in the way the movie wanted it to because it never set up that emotional connection.

That said, I really like the English title of this movie!


tl;dr
This movie would have been 100x better if it was in the point-of-view of Ni Ni's character (or in fact, just any other character) and if they’d shaved off around 15 minutes from it.

Comments

[lessonsinescapology]

I didn't watch the movie but heard it made many people reluctant to travel to Thailand^^