TIFF 2021: Snakehead Review

This will be one of many reviews during this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, to keep up with our latest coverage, click here.

Snakehead is a raw and unflinching story centered around the elusive world of gang-led human trafficking. It is a well-paced descent into a dark pit of despair through the lives of both those that have chosen to profit from other’s desperation and those that have decided enduring another form of a vicious cycle is a better alternative than their current experience.

Sister Tse (Shuya Chang), the main protagonist of Snakehead, takes the audience through an underworld of one of the largest snakehead operations as she searches for her daughter who was thought long lost after Tse escaped capture in China only to leave her daughter behind. As Sister Tse secures passage to New York, she is slowly introduced into this unrepentant form of money-making choosing to work her way up its hierarchy in order to pay off the massive debt she owes. She quickly becomes a proficient earner under the mentorship of the gang matriarch, Dai Mah (Jade Wu), and jockeys for a position of power against her son, Rambo (Kang). The story quickly changes pace as the protégé tries to outmaneuver her teacher resulting in a climax that does not disappoint.

Snakehead marks Evan Jackson Leong’s debut feature, offering a compelling story albeit one still in need of a more dynamic main character. The longing for familial fulfillment is the central device that operates the narrative from the protagonist’s perspective and does so to a level that keeps the overall project engaging throughout, but it can feel deficient at times when the film is in need of capitalizing from Sister Tse’s emotional journey. And while the pacing is harnessed for the optimum delivery within its 90-minute runtime, it still offers spaces for improvement as many of the characters are in need of further development in order for a larger emotional connection to be established with the viewer.

In the end, Snakehead exposes viewers to a real world that exists just beyond the periphery of everyday life. Its characters operate on both sides of morality while eliciting feelings of empathy due to the system they are forced to reside in. Its larger message is more of a warning rather than a form of entertainment, and while the latter still remains, the essence of the film is that of endurance and perseverance.

still courtesy of TIFF

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