Deadline (自殺通告) (2025)
Director – Kiwi Chow – 2025 – Hong Kong, Taiwan, UK – Cert. 15 tbc – 118m
****
A secondary school focused entirely on maximising its students’ exam results is upset by intimations of pending suicide and use of performance-enhancing drugs – plays as part of the UK’s Hong Kong Film Festival which runs from Friday, September 25th to Sunday, 4th October at various venues
The students of En-Shan Secondary School, clad in distinctive uniforms of purple shirt with militaristic shoulder boards and dark grey tie, perform aggressive workout moves as they chant their school litany extolling hard work leading to success. Principal Kung (Anthony Wong Chau Sang from Infernal Affairs, Andrew Lau, Alan Mak,2002; Hard Boiled, John Woo, 1992; My Name Ain’t Suzie, Angie Chen, 1985 – this latter showing in this year’s HKFF) encourages them in the idea that present suffering leads to later success.
The ubiquitous iSmart system contains a database of vocabulary the students must master to game the exam system; its latest 2.3 iteration uses eye-tracking software to record how much time the pupil is taking in direct eye contact with the teacher. It makes the surveillance technology of Happyend (Neo Sora, 2024) sound amateurish by comparison, even if, ultimately, Deadline is the more satisfying viewing experience overall.
Seven days before the final exam, the sight of uniformed pupils checking into the school building with smart cards, walking orderly fashion in long lines of two by two, recalls nothing so much as the similarly regimented workers shuffling to their stations operating the machines in Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1927). They plug their smartphones into rows of waiting receptacles as they enter the premises. They pause to be seen and recognised by a wall-mounted security camera on the way in. They sit down to study, seated in rows like workers in a vast call centre.
Teacher Miss Tien (Allison Lin), coming in to work, is preoccupied with someone – her partner? – on the phone. Ending the call, she takes the list of observed teachers to Principal Kung in his vast, open plan office. Kung wants Gao Hongxiao’s name back on the list, even though Miss Tien says his work has been improving. Kung only wants to hire the best teachers, to ensure the school gets excellent results. Meanwhile a teacher – who turns out to be Mr. Gao (RD Huang) – gives student Heng (Run-yin Bai from Old Fox, Hsaio Ya-chuan, 2023; The Bold, the Corrupt and the Beautiful, Yang Ya-che, 2017) a textbook in which the questions that has has been having difficultly with are highlighted as promised. Whatever the principal thinks, Gao looks like a conscientious teacher who goes the extra mile to help his students.
Heng is bullied mercilessly as “the ADHD kid” by Kyle Chen (Meng Syun) and his sidekick (Tai Ting-wei). In a lavatory cubicle, a girl Ruoyan (Shao Yi Mei) self harms by horizontally cutting her upper legs.
A4 fliers drop from the hall ceiling. “Stop poisoning us. No more exams under medication. Final deadline. A student will commit suicide if you don’t comply.”
Miss Tien interrogates Ruoyen. Has she been taking her anti-depressants regularly? The IT teacher Sih-Tu (Wang Tzu Tiang) questions Chun Chiu (Jimmy Lia), one of five picked out from a larger group (of which Ruoyen was a part) who were on the seventh floor when the pamphlets appeared.
Miss Tien’s Zoom with white American Catherine (uncredited) is interrupted when top achiever Peiching (Tai Ya Zhi also from Old Fox) knocks at her door wanting to talk about the the words on the flier. The girl agrees to come back tomorrow.
Chun Chiu finds his card won’t access the school garden. Peiching uses her smartphone to get him in. All he’s interested in is plants and flowers. Doesn’t it worry how how other people might treat you?, she asks.
Six days to go. While the principal makes an impassioned assembly speech to the assembled pupils (which feels a little like a fascist rally), Peiching goes to the science lab and takes a syringe. She is later discovered on the floor unconscious. The media report her suicide. Miss Tien confides in a colleague that she’s thinking of emigrating. so she can take her daughter out of the country’s education system.
Five days. The head boy Jay Mo (Michael Chang) wants to do something positive to get everyone’s mind back on track. He initiates a No Student Suicide Contract campaign. Chun Chiu meanwhile, enraged that his passcard won’t get him into the school garden, punches through the glass door to gain access. Ruoyen, reading the Contract with everyone else, can’t cope with it, and collapses. Chun, pursued by Miss Tien, storms into Ruoyen classroom to accuse Mr. Gao of having his pupils take the performance-enhancing drug Alza.
The days count down. The day of the exam, all students undergo a urine test for the drug Alza. Horrified when the results reveal half the students are tasking the drug, the school director overrules Principal Kung and calls off the urine tests…
It’s a shame that what is essentially a small scale school drama never quite lives up to the incredible promise of its opening, epic build-up. The iSmart system 2.3 is reduced to little more than a script device following the bravura visuals built around it in the opening. The whole thing sets itself up as a dystopian movie in secondary school clothing, but both genres have been individually better tackled elsewhere; if you want to see them better tackled together, look no further than Detention (John Hsu, 2019).
That said, as the piece runs through its cast of stock characters and their story arcs, its clear enough who’s who while their various plights certainly engage the audience. The narrative also works as a mystery: when the revelation comes as to who is behind the dropping of the suicide fliers at the start, after various hints as to other possible perpetrators, it’s believable enough, and the film is brave enough to push beyond the resolution of the mystery to explore the social microcosm that the school portrayed represents.
The most compelling character is Chun, the boy who wants out, the one who would rather spend his time caring for plants and flowers than taking the exam. Surprisingly, perhaps, given the several characters at the centre of the proceedings, he ultimately becomes the one we care most about. The film can be read as a rallying cry against a world where grades and qualifications are what matters, whatever the cost, and on that level it’s hard to fault it.
Deadline plays as part of the UK’s Hong Kong Film Festival which runs from Friday, September 25th to Sunday, 4th October at various venues.
Full Festival programme and tickets → hkff.uk
Trailer: