every heightened tension point is accompanied by a music cut, a change of focus to anything but the main characters, and a shot composition that really makes you think about how scary it must be to live in the constant fear of everything crumbling around you in the most literal sense. throw in some anti-establishmentarian allegory in the form of a students protest, show it to a hk audience, and voila a full theatre.
the silence of this movie is truly deafening
