There are movies that unsettle you with atmosphere. There are movies that scare you with suspense. And then there’s The Untold Story, a Hong Kong crime-horror flick so grotesquely mismanaged that it manages to be both a true-crime exploitation circus and a PSA on why you should never eat pork buns from strangers. Directed by Herman Yau, starring Danny Lee as the world’s crankiest cop and Anthony Wong as the world’s least hygienic chef, the film takes a real-life murder case and slathers it in gore, sleaze, and bad slapstick. If this is Hong Kong’s idea of fine dining, Michelin stars should be handed out with barf bags.
Based on a True Story—Well, Kinda
The movie is “inspired” by the infamous Eight Immortals Restaurant murders of 1985, where a family of ten disappeared and later turned up in pieces. The actual case was grisly enough. What does Yau do? He looks at the tragedy, shrugs, and says, “Needs more cannibalism.” Never mind that no one was proven to be turned into pork buns—the movie treats it as fact, because hey, nothing sells tickets like implying dim sum is made out of dim sum families.
So instead of a thoughtful crime drama, we get Anthony Wong grinding limbs like he’s auditioning for Iron Chef: Hannibal Lecter Edition. Every time he chops, dices, or steams, the film seems convinced it’s clever. Spoiler: it isn’t. It’s just gross, and not in the fun splatter-horror way. More in the “is this why I had food poisoning last weekend?” way.
Anthony Wong: Michelin Star for Overacting
Anthony Wong won the Hong Kong Film Award for Best Actor for this role, which only proves award shows can be bribed with entrails. His Wong Chi-Hang is a murderer, rapist, and culinary war criminal. One minute he’s screaming like a possessed maniac, the next he’s sneering like he just discovered your Wi-Fi password. He stabs, he slashes, he rapes, he rolls out dough like Julia Child possessed by Satan.
Yes, Wong throws himself into the role, but “throwing yourself into a role” doesn’t always mean it’s good. Sometimes it just means you’ve landed face-first in a vat of rancid soy sauce. Watching him cackle while serving pork buns made of his victims isn’t shocking—it’s cartoonish. Elmer Fudd had more menace.
The Police: Three Stooges With Badges
Danny Lee plays Inspector Lee, who is supposed to be the straight man. Unfortunately, he’s surrounded by a squad of bumbling sidekicks—Bull, Robert, King Kong, and Bo—who act less like homicide detectives and more like a rejected Cantopop comedy troupe. These cops bumble around crime scenes, crack unfunny jokes, and generally behave as though they’re investigating a jaywalking ticket instead of a cannibalistic massacre.
Every time the film builds an ounce of dread, it cuts to the cops goofing off, like the director panicked and thought, We need more fart jokes before the next dismemberment. It’s tonal whiplash so severe you’ll need a neck brace.
The Violence: Equal Parts Nausea and Comedy
Let’s be clear: this movie is nasty. People get stabbed, hacked, burned, raped, and minced into pork buns. The dismemberment scenes are long, detailed, and shot with the loving care of a cooking show. If you ever wanted to see human flesh diced like scallions, congratulations—you’re the target audience.
But the violence is so over-the-top that it flips from horrifying to absurd. One guy gets beaten to death with a soup spoon. Another gets stabbed in the crotch with chopsticks. Subtlety is not on the menu here. It’s like the filmmakers sat down and said, “What’s the dumbest possible murder weapon in a restaurant? Great—use that.”
Instead of building dread, the movie just builds nausea. It’s exploitation cinema at its laziest: slap together real tragedy, add gallons of fake blood, and call it edgy.
The Pork Buns: A Health Code Violation With Credits
The infamous pork buns are supposed to be the film’s signature horror element. They’re the thing everyone remembers: Anthony Wong turning his victims into dim sum for unsuspecting customers. But here’s the thing—no one eating the buns ever seems to notice. Not the taste, not the texture, not the random fingernail that would surely sneak in.
It’s one of those movie moments where you realize the filmmakers don’t care about logic. They don’t care about plausibility. They just want you to gag and whisper, “Oh no, cannibalism!” while they pat themselves on the back for being shocking.
Honestly, I’ve eaten gas station sushi scarier than these buns.
The Torture Confession: Police Brutality, Now With Laughs!
Eventually, the cops catch Wong, and you’d think the movie would finally settle into some courtroom drama. Nope. Instead, we get endless scenes of Wong being beaten, tortured, and drugged until he confesses. The cops act like schoolyard bullies, and the movie plays it all for laughs, as if police misconduct is just another wacky sitcom subplot.
By the time Wong breaks down and confesses to slaughtering an entire family, the audience isn’t horrified—we’re exhausted. Not by the brutality, but by the film’s insistence that this is entertainment.
The Ending: Death by Convenience
The film ends with Wong committing suicide in prison after one last run-in with the cops. The narrator solemnly tells us there was “enough evidence to convict him, but it never happened due to his death.” Which is a fancy way of saying: “We had no idea how to end this movie, so we slapped on a title card and called it a day.”
It’s anticlimactic, unsatisfying, and frankly, merciful. By that point, you want everyone—Wong, the cops, the director, yourself—to just lie down and stop suffering.
Final Thoughts: The Real Crime Is the Movie
The Untold Story is infamous, sure. But infamous doesn’t mean good. It’s a sleazy, tone-deaf mashup of gore, slapstick, and bad police comedy that trivializes real tragedy and somehow makes cannibalism boring. Anthony Wong’s award-winning performance is less “haunting” and more “hammy,” and the cops are a parody of themselves. The violence is grotesque but never meaningful, and the “shocking” pork bun twist is about as subtle as a meat cleaver to the skull.
Watching this movie feels like eating at a restaurant where the food tastes bad, the service is worse, and halfway through the meal you realize the chef is chopping up the other diners. It’s not just bad—it’s indigestion in cinematic form.
