Unidentified Murder

Bluesky

They’re all over YouTube, TikTok and, sometimes, television: long-running series with black backgrounds, cluttered screens and curiously overconfident hosts, reeling in viewers with one dubious real life mystery tale after another. True crime is a favourite subject, and likewise supposed hauntings, but nothing really baits the hook like aliens. Screened as part of Fantasia 2026, Ka Hei Kwok and Jack Chun-kit Lee’s comic mystery opens with an episode of Hong Kong-based mystery show Stardus Memories, this time focused on a 25-year-old case of aliens supposedly abducting a child on Tung Tau hill, never to return him.

Guesting on the show are the two men who, as kids themselves, were with him on that day: clean-cut Mark (Ling Man-lung) and his slightly shifty but personable friend Kit (Ronald Lam Tsz-kit). They stick to the same story they did all those years ago, and respond with shock to the suggestion that they might have killed the missing boy, Ho, and then covered it up. There’s a suggestion that we might find out, depending on how they respond to a scheme by Mark’s girlfriend, studiously ditzy influencer Man (Renci Yeung), who is known for the popular channel Prank My Boyfriend. She has hired an actor (Peter Chan Charm-man) to pretend to Ho, returned after all these years, and surprise the guys when they make their annual trip to the wilderness area to commemorate the event.

What Man witnesses when spying on them there may shock you, but wait a minute – is she being pranked too? You might ask yourself how a person might react to being the sole, frequent target of a prank channel – or, indeed, to someone thinking that unresolved childhood trauma was a good subject for public humiliation. There is layer upon layer of trickery at work here, unspooled in a farcical manner which will delight some viewers and infuriate others.

Ultimately, the shallowness of the characters works against the film. There are a couple of well-timed deeper emotional moments, and sometimes that shallowness might be interpreted as satirical comment, but it still makes it hard to invest in the film. In particular, none of the characters seems very concerned about the idea of a child going missing. Other possibly horrific events seem to spark concern only in relation to how they might make life difficult for the protagonists.

What the film does well is to observe and pick apart certain trends in media, both traditional and social. It uses comedy to prompt viewers to think a little more deeply about what they think they know as a result of media consumption, addressing not just misinformation but balance and habits of consumption. Flashback scenes are well handled and add a bit of heart. To enjoy it, however, you will need a high tolerance for repetition and cleverness for its own sake.

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