Hook in the Mist

The mist over Qinglan Reservoir never lifts. A pendant and fishhook engraved with the date 1962.7.15 don’t catch fish; they catch the living and the dead.

Three years ago, documentary photographer Shen Bozhou’s heart stopped for ten minutes when he jumped into the reservoir to save his partner, who had plunged into the water under mysterious circumstances. Ever since, he has been haunted by visions from beneath the surface. Now he has returned to finish the film he left incomplete, only to find in the hand of a floating corpse a fishhook identical to the one his former partner found before going missing.

Following the hook’s eerie pull, he uncovers a secret from sixty years ago: Chen Shunian, the reservoir’s night watchman, and his wife both drowned. His seven-month-pregnant wife was trapped in the deep water, and her husband, consumed by guilt, hid from her for sixty years. The fishhook was their only way of reaching out to each other. Using the hook as a medium, Shen Bozhou reunites the restless spirits, finally giving them peace. He thinks he has escaped his own uncanny fate.

But months later, the fishhook appears again. The lead sinker in a strange woman’s hand points straight to his former partner, who has been waiting beneath the water for a thousand days and nights.

The fifteenth day of the seventh month approaches, the fated day. His seven-month-pregnant girlfriend tries desperately to stop him, but he is destined to be claimed by the hook.

Some hooks, once picked up, can never be cast off. He thought he was a messenger guiding the dead to rest, only to discover in the end that he himself was the last fish about to be dragged into the abyss.