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A Land Imagined Movie Review

A Land Imagined is a 2018 Singaporean neo-noir mystery thriller film directed by Yeo Siew Hua. It’s a film that had a lot of potential, but was wasted on weak execution.

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“I think he wasn’t picky.

That’s what happens when you’re lonely“

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A lonely construction worker from China goes missing at a Singapore land reclamation site, and a sleepless police investigator must put himself in the mind of the migrant to uncover the truth beneath all that sand. This movie tries to be a neo-noir classic, but mostly fails at it. It is one of those Asian flicks that purely favor style over substance, which is evident in every single of its frames and scenes.

First and foremost, the characterization is simply not good. The actors did the best they could with the little material that they got, so I cannot really blame any of them and it would not be fair to blame them, but the characters themselves received so little attention and genuine arcs that it really bothered me. It’s by far the worst part of this movie.

The storytelling is also quite problematic. The existential nature to the story and some social drama was fine, but most of it felt overly nihilistic and depressing. The dialogue is okay, but again too much is said and not enough is genuinely stated about any of these themes. It’s a film that felt ponderous in the director’s thoughts and the overall clunky nature of the pacing and the whole narrative.

As for its technical aspects, clearly A Land Imagined excelled most in this section. Not only is the atmosphere quite good, but it also truly resembled the noir aesthetic from other neo-noir pictures. The movie’s reference book is quite large and inclusive, and although it brings nothing new to the table itself, at least the references and the stylistic choices are sound.

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The cinematography is genuinely terrific and the film’s color palette was surprisingly memorable and colorful. The use of the red and purple was particularly interesting. The score and the editing are also pretty good, but the direction, pacing and the script all faltered very quickly and never recovered.

A Land Imagined is a passable neo-noir feature that is superbly shot with an interesting color palette, very well edited and highly atmospheric. Some of the dialogue is also fine. However, most of the script wasn’t all that great and the characterization was rough, leading to an overly slim and even derivative entry in this genre that is not all that easy to properly pull off.

My Rating – 3