1Fifteen years ago, a man fell under a tram and lost his head. The old death haunts the present as the ghost possesses various people to exact his revenge. June (Wong Siu Kam) is able to see the dead out of her left eye. She and Peter (Wong Choi) hook up one night and become engulfed in the vengeful apparition’s plans.
Shu Qi was luminescent in the role of the young woman who could see the dead. Eason’s character was all over the place, never sure if June was supporting him or part of the malevolent ghost’s plans. Sam Lee was Eason’s best bud Simon who tried to keep Peter employed. Kara Hui played a mother possessed by not one, but two ghosts and gave a thrilling performance.
Visible Secret wasn’t a scary film in the classic horror style. It ended up being a story where the living and the dead inhabited the same spaces with little in the way of telling them apart. People were often possessed, sometimes for nefarious purposes and sometimes because they wanted to see old friends. The film’s vengeful headless debt collector didn’t quite match up even with Washington Irving’s tame Sleepy Hollow. The titular secret was highly visible and not so secret. Unfortunately, the unevenness of the story encumbered what could have been an interesting tale of entwined spooky, if not scary, lives lost and filled with regret.
29 October 2025
Was this review helpful to you?
Was this review helpful to you?
Fancy a Toblerone?
Theoretically, any film that opens by decapitating Anthony Wong should be a winner; unfortunately, Visible Secret gets stuck with what it wants to be. It wants to be a slick and sexy horror-comedy, but instead it completely squanders all its promise shortly after the opening credits have finished rolling. It's a film that never quite clarifies what it aims to be; the horror elements feel perfunctory and passed over in favour of the romantic and character-based elements. It's more suggestive than genuinely frightening, but in a way that reflects the region's modern, millennium-era scene in its portrayal of young people caught in history, trying to understand both the world around them and each other as they navigate life, love, identity, and family. Ann Hui's direction is exceptionally muted and melancholic, creating an eerie, almost dreamlike tone that feels distinctly early-2000s Hong Kong cinema, succeeding more as a thoughtful meditation on loneliness, memory, and the inability to let go. Yet it all feels off, almost unfinished, bogged down by its narrative loose ends and especially the editing. The performances from the cast are fine; no one really stood out to me, outside of the terrific Kara Hui and Shu Qi, although the latter was mainly down to her fashion choices, while Tommy Wai's soundtrack is perfectly servicable in complementing the tone and visuals. Unfortunately, Visible Secret simply does not gel together; although there is certainly some quality stuff buried in its middle, it is the sort of character-based drama done better elsewhere. It doesn't go for scares or laughs. It falls into this weird valley where nothing is quite right, offering more of a more a gentle, ghostly romance with occasional dark humour than anything sharper or gnarlier. Still, maybe that's on me for expecting more from what its opening promised.Was this review helpful to you?
