Missing (2008)

A bold if messy ghost story

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.

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