The Soul

This film is close to being great, with slick production, strong acting, and intricate plot. Quite simply, the central mystery in The Soul is captivating. But the film is anything but simple, and in fact is quite twisty and fantastic in the way it builds. Questions mount, suspicions increase, and secrets are exposed. Director Wei-Hao Cheng easily slips into an engaging pace and stylizes the tone of the film more on the realism side than film noir. The subtle difficulty of the complicated plot is also on full display as on paper, the story is difficult to even simply summarize. But the film is somehow never confusing, and most viewers will be fully invested by the end.

But again, the film is close to being great, and not, sadly, purely great. Mainly this has to do with the ending being potentially very unsatisfactory. Further, the love story between two of the side characters (but central to the story) is timidly represented, and the characters seem unable to say easily descriptive words, like "gay" or "queer" or "trans," for example, which may lead to some feeling like part of the film's producers may have outlawed certain aspects of the script, film, or editing. Also, for a film set in the future, some of the special effects (like the shot of a young woman jumping off a cliff onto a highway, killing herself) are awfully poor and look quite unrealistic.