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ReviewUnidentified Murder movie review: twisty Hong Kong comedy is admirable for its ambition
This award-winning comedy about an online prank that ends in a murder is a quirky story underpinned by the performances of its lead actors
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3/5 stars
To understand how a modestly staged feature like Unidentified Murder manages to charm the socks off so many Hong Kong critics – despite doing only a passable job of tackling its subjects of male friendship, shoddy scams and grass-roots filmmaking – one must first acknowledge the depressing state of local comedy.
When the Hong Kong Film Critics Society gave the best screenplay honour to this quirky effort in January 2026, it had been years since Stephen Chow Sing-chi and Pang Ho-cheung vacated the scene, leaving behind a dearth of comedy talents – and investors – daring enough to experiment with either content or form.
Enter writer-director duo Kwok Ka-hei and Jack Lee Chun-kit’s feature debut, which unapologetically plays like a spiritual cousin to One Cut of the Dead (2017), the inventive Japanese zombie movie that makes use of its nesting-doll narrative to explore the insane possibilities of comedy writing. It is, in other words, at least trying.
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