AllMovie

Harbinger of a new wave in Hong Kong cinema and one of director Ann Hui's best films, The Secret capitalizes on symbols in Chinese culture referring to birth, marriage and death and sets a definite mood of mystery and foreboding from the beginning. A kind of psychological horror-thriller, the story is based on an actual incident in 1970. Some school children come across the battered bodies of a young man and woman, tied to a tree. Their faces have been smashed in, and their clothes are torn. It turns out that the man (Man Chi-leung) was a medical student in the university. As the story unfolds, the mystery and mood rather outweigh the terrible "secret" connected to the murders.