Written by Joseph Jeethu (Drishyam), Kaihua Fan, Sheng Lei, Peng Li, Yuqian Qin, Weiwei Yang and Pei Zhai
Directed by Sam Quah
Starring Xiao Yang, Tan Zhuo and Joan Chen
Running time: 1 hour and 52 minutes
Currently unrated, but depicts violence and sexual assault
Language: Mandarin

by Allison Yakulis

This was my first Fantasia Film Festival screener and guys, I feel a little like I’ve had my dessert before dinner. Sheep Without a Shepherd is one of those movies that is so lovingly crafted that anything I’d say against it feels like I’m splitting hairs. With confident and competent shooting, solid performances, and a plot that’s entertaining without being overly complex, it’s just a really enjoyable film overall.

As you may remember my mentioning it if you’ve read our Fantasia Fest Preview, Sheep is adapted from twice-made Indian flick Drishyam, which was reportedly well-received. Although I have yet to watch it, from the synopsis of the 2013 film Sheep appears to hew fairly close to its source material, even down to its protagonists’ genders and occupations.

Sheep leans heavily on dramatic irony - we the audience know what has happened and more or less what pieces of information each side is working with. It’s similar to the mechanic the Ocean’s heist film franchise uses where the audience is let in on “the plan” to subsequently revel in its execution and thrill when it appears something isn’t going quite right. This initial deluge of information manufactures tension like little else can, as the audience is then consistently waiting for the other shoe to drop.

The story is set out as this: Li Weijie’s elder daughter Pingping wants to go to a weekend academic camp. While there, she’s drugged and sexually assaulted by Suchat, the rich and spoiled son of a politician and the police chief. When Suchat tries to blackmail Pingping into providing him sexual favors with the video of her own rape, she finally tells her mother what has happened and, while the two of them are confronting Suchat about what he has done, unintentionally kill him and hide his body. This is observed by younger daughter An’an. The killing happens while Weijie is out of town on a business trip, although he returns home earlier than he intended when he grows concerned that his family isn’t picking up the house phone - upon his return he discovers that the proverbial s-word has hit the fan, bigtime.

I know it sounds like the above was spoilers, but honestly this is just the first act set-up. The meat of the film pits Weijie and the police chief against each other, setting up alibis and traps, digging up clues, and playing mind games with one another until one of them can gain the upper hand. We learn Weijie was an orphaned child with a 4th grade education that managed to scrape together a decent business installing and servicing internet hookups for businesses. His obsession for movies becomes not just a character trait but an inspiration for his strategies - if Weijie listened to podcasts, he’d be a fan of I Saw it in a Movie (although I think they’re yet to have a “help, my family killed a guy” episode). His role as a scrappy underdog is well matched against the police chief, whose power, privilege and attention to detail make her a formidable opponent.

After dropping all this background and set up on you, the film manages to remain tense and engaging through smart storytelling and from the acting efforts of Joan Chen (as the chief), Yang Xiao (as Weijie) and somewhat surprisingly Xiran Zhang (An’an) who despite her extreme youth I thought was especially good in her role. In the latter half of the film, there’s a scene where the police chief pressures An’an to tell her what she knows as you hear the rest of the Li family being beaten in another room and I was on the edge of my seat waiting to see if this little girl was going to crack.

I also found Chen especially compelling. She’s shown early in the movie to be an extremely clever and talented detective, bringing the hammer down on a murderer with such an exotic method as to be something out of a Sherlock Holmes story. But she’s also a mother, albeit to a monster, who knows in her gut that something has happened to her child. Seeing her struggle with her grief and rage while trying to prove concretely that her son is dead and do her job as an officer is - well, it’s a lot, but Chen navigates it deftly and with feeling.

Although the trailer led me to believe this film would prominently feature slick editing cuts and other bits of flair, there’s not as much of it in the film (you could maybe count the sequence that intercuts Pingping and her mother’s struggle with Suchat with a muay thai boxing match). Instead, Quah emphasizes shot composition and lighting to create dramatic and beautiful tableus. Things like a bumped lightbulb or a looming shadow become the real showpieces, and it felt just as rewarding to watch.

Anywhere I’d want to dock points I am foiled. Yes, it’s annoying when movies use sexual assault as a plot contrivance - but it’d be hard to plug in another offense that would still allow your audience to root for murderers, and I do feel that it was treated with some gravity here. Yes, the movie ends three times before it’s actually done (some Lord of the Rings vibes over here) - but the final ending we get pays off some track laid earlier and I found it too charming to speak against it. As such, I have no other choice than to highly recommend you check out Sheep Without a Shepherd.

Sheep Without a Shepherd will be available in Canada On Demand via Fantasia Film Festival’s website August 20th through September 2nd. The Hindi-language version of Drishyam (2015) is currently available to stream on Netflix.