Malaysian filmmaker Sam Quah‘s directorial debut “A Sheep Without a Shepherd” , an official remake of the Indian film “Drishyam” by Jeethu Joseph, was a huge success both in China and Southeast Asia. Interestingly, his follow up, “A Place Called Silence” which centers on bullying, is actually a remake of his own film from 2022. But due to the lead actor Jag Huang’s MeToo sexual assault controversy, the film never got a release in China. Determined to have a second go, Quah decided to remake and recast it with international stars and it paid off. After opening in China, it became the second highest summer scoring film and a huge hit all over Southeast Asia.
Set in a fictional city named Doma somewhere in Southeast Asia, the film kicks off with Tong (Wang Sheng Di), a mute student from Jing Hua Girls’ High School, glued to the wall by a bunch of bullies. Later, her mother Li Han (Janine Chang Ning), who also works there as a cleaner, finds her and cuts her down. Other students who are witnesses and Li keep quiet and never report the incident. Afterall, Angie, the leader of the bullies, is the headmaster’s daughter.
That night, without Angie, three of the bullies meet in a remote abandoned house to chill out. However, someone in a raincoat turns up and hammers them to death. The camera then cuts to Li Han, also in a raincoat, harvesting her kumquats on her roof garden. In the distance, someone is also filming Li and Tong while they pack the fruits into jars. As the girls fail to show up at school, local detective Dai (Francis Ng) and his assistants start to investigate the case.
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As he investigates further, Dai starts to suspect Li and especially Tong who has mysteriously disappeared. Meanwhile, tricked into meeting her bullying friend in an abandoned bus, Angie turns up and the same person in the raincoat brutally kills her. That prompted Dai to shift his attention to the school handyman Lin Zai Fu (Eric Wang) whose daughter also dies at the school and now behaves unnerved around the girls. Li, who believes that Lin has kidnapped Tong, starts her own quest of finding her, hopefully alive.
All the lead characters are not what they seem to be in Quah’s dark thriller, which also touches on an incredibly wide range of social topics. Starting off with school bullying, it moves on to murders, domestic violence, child abuse, voyeurism, religion, cover ups and so on. But basically it all boils down to someone masterminding a murderous revenge after suffering unfairness to end it all. It looks like the only way out is more violence against violence. The Chinese title which translates as “Silent Killing” is indeed more accurate in summing up the whole film.
Visually, the production looks the part in creating a dark place for the characters to live in. Although the brutal murder scenes recall that of a slasher film, this is hardly a horror film of that nature. Furthermore, by setting the whole film in almost non stop pouring rain also helps to create the gloomy and despair atmosphere it needs. Also the people in this hellish city created by Quah seem to use silence as their refuge against their unfairness in life.
As Li Han, Taiwanese actress Chang Jun Ning delivers and captures both the vulnerability and emotions of a driven mother. Her performance is quite powerful though her reactions towards her daughter can be frustrating to watch at times. In fact some viewers might even hate her for what she did to Tong even though she was trying her best to protect her. Wang Sheng Di is equally good in playing her mute daughter Tong and she expresses her emotions well by her gestures.
On the other hand, slightly on the heavy side, Francis Ng is almost unrecognizable as detective Dai. But it is always a delight to see him in almost any film and he sure brings a touch of commanding flavor to the production. Eric Wang Chuan Jun is memorable playing the school handyman Zai Fu, a lost soul tortured by his daughter’s death. Cai Ming appears briefly as landlady Wu who provides the film’s very dark humor.
Overall, Quah’s well produced and calculated dark thriller “A Place Called Silence” is an enjoyable watch. Unfortunately its overly complex plot touches on too many subjects and fails to cover them all in depth. But throughout the film his theme of being silent which eventually leads to violence gets the most focus. Quah is indeed a technically slick director with wonderful visual sense to watchout for.
