Cheng Cheng Films
The Taiwanese film industry has gone through many ups and downs through the last century, but their movies tend not to hit crossover status outside the country. As such, I don’t really have a good sense of the cultural context or style of films there. I can make educated guesses, but it’s hard sometimes to be sure when you have so little exposure, unlike many other countries in the region.
Who Killed Cock Robin is a Taiwanese thriller from director Cheng Wei-Hao, known before for the horror genre, and that really does show here. He shoots the movie with a handheld style that tends to work better for some scenes than others. At times the movie dips into flat out horror tropes and scenes, and the visceral nature of the cinematography works well to elicit terror and concern.
The film’s title is a reference to a nursery rhyme, albeit one not as commonly seen in recent years. The rhyme, as might be expected, is about murder, although like many nursery rhymes, stars a bunch of animals discussing the murder and the subsequent funeral. I don’t think it’s a super deep reference for this movie though, instead I think the vague nature of the sinister rhyme’s title is an intentional creepy juxtaposition to have a clever movie title.
Kaiser Chuang stars as Wang Hsiao-chi, a journalist with a lot of ambition and pride trying to get the latest dirt on celebrities and politicians. His direct supervisor Maggie (Hsu Wei-ning) pushes him in this way, and they have a forbidden chemistry and camaraderie. After some car trouble, Hsiao-chi discovers his used vehicle is related to a terrible hit-and-run accident he witnessed nearly ten years earlier.
This leads Hsiao-chi, as the journalist with ambition, down a twisty path to uncover what happened, to track down the lone survivor, and to find those responsible. It ultimately (as to be expected) takes him down a path of thrills and horrors. This is a movie built on a series of twists, and some work a lot better than others. The movie takes a little while to get going, and the deep, twisty storytelling means that it can be difficult to follow exactly what’s happening at times.
But the action is shot well, and the main actors are exactly the right sort of curious balance of guilty and innocent. Naturally nothing is as it seems, and feels inspired by similar tales of cinema, perhaps among them Oldboy, the 2003 movie that inspired a lot of knockoffs. I’m not sure ultimately, though, if the more subversive and horrifying elements work to tell the story as they do simply to horrify.
I think my favorite thriller of this type in recent years is Gone Girl, which is filled with twists but not overly so — it is a difficult line to walk after all. I think this will be the decent sort of on demand movie for those with an enjoyment of dark Asian cinema, as this feels like a great stepping stone to a more slick, tightly done thrillers.
I think there’s a lot of talent exhibited here, but it’s not yet where it could be — the direction is a bit messy and the story a tad convoluted. The side characters can creep into caricatures and archetypes, but I do like the performances of Kaiser Chuang and Hsu Wei-ning in some of the twists that really do feel satisfying. And it does something quite difficult for a thriller — it ends well.
Who Killed Cock Robin has a run time of 1 hour 58 minutes and is not rated.
Share this post
