It tells the story of the killings through the eyes of the boy’s father, a man of few words named Yuen, played with tremendous subtlety by Sean Lau in a performance that glimpses at the grief and guilt behind his character’s often expressionless face.
This film starts with a horrific crime: without warning, a 15-year-old boy stabs his mother and sister to death with a kitchen knife in their Hong Kong apartment.
There’s one brilliant moment, very soon after the killings, when he looks out from his restaurant, as if he cannot comprehend how the world is still turning; it is conveyed by Lau with barely a flicker, a tightening of the jaw, a slight squint of the eyes.
Yuen’s son Ming (Dylan So) has killed his mother Yin (Jo Koo) and 12-year-old sister (Lainey Hung).
After his own son brutally murders his wife and daughter, a Hong Kong man questions his own parental culpability in the horrific crime.
