July 5, 2025
by Carla Hay
Directed by Yao Wenyi
Mandarin with subtitles
Culture Representation: Taking place in 2025 (with flashbacks to 2019), in Hangzhou, China, the dramatic film “Malice” features an-all Asian cast of characters representing the working-class and middle-class.
Culture Clash: When a young hospital nurse and her 10-year-old cancer patient fall from a hospital rooftop, an ambitious TV news anchor rushes to be first with exclusive reports about the investigation, which leads to dire consequences for several people involved.
Culture Audience: “Malice” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in suspenseful dramas about crime cases and how these cases are covered in the media.
“Malice” can get a little preachy in its messaging about social media gossip and news media exploitation. However, it’s still an engrossing, twist-filled drama about the mysterious case of a nurse and her 10-year-old cancer patient, who both fell from a hospital rooftop. It’s an impactful story and cautionary tale about how it’s important not to jump to conclusions without getting as many facts as possible.
Directed by Yao Wenyi and written by Zhang Zhen, “Malice” takes place in Hangzhou, China. The movie is set in 2025, but most of the story is a flashback to 2019. “Malice” has thought-provoking commentary about the fickleness of how people are portrayed as “heroes” and “villains” in the media, as well as the extreme and reckless things that some people in the media will do in order to increase their audiences.
“Malice” begins by showing part of what happened at Binjiang Third Hospital in Hangzhou, on the night on September 7, 2019. It’s a rainy night, and a 10-year-old female cancer patient named Jing (played by Yang Enyou) has escaped from her room. A 22-year-old nurse named Li Yue (played by Chen Yusi) chases after Jing, who was diagnosed with neuroblastoma.
Jing and Yue both end up on the building’s high-rise rooftop and fall down onto the ground at the same time after tussling with each other. As a result of this tragic fall, Jing dies instantly, while Yue is a coma. Was Jing’s death an accident or not?
Someone who insists that it’s murder is Jing’s distraught mother You Qian (played by Mei Ting), who says she saw Yue force Jing off of the roof during the tussle between Yue and Jing. Qian was several feet away when she saw the fall and couldn’t save Jing in time. Because Qian saw this incident while it was dark and raining, and she was several feet away, Qian’s eyewitness account could be doubted, but most people in the general public immediately believe her.
Before “Malice” reveals the layers of the story about how this tragedy changed certain people’s lives, the movie cuts to a scene in 2025, where a well-known TV journalist named Ye Pan (played by Zhang Xiaofei) is making a speaking appearance to college-age students in an auditorium. The subject is media manipulation. During the lecture, she shows a video of a college professor named Professor Parker who tied himself to a chair and immersed himself in a tank of water.
As the water tank filled up, Professor Parker did a livestream on social media to say he would let himself drown in the tank if he got 1 million “likes” on the livestream within 31 hours. As the deadline approached, Pan asks the students what they think the outcome would be if they knew the professor had been accused of sexual harassment. Most of the students predicted that the public would want the professor to drown in the tank.
Pan continues to play the video recording until it shows that 1 million views were reached. Professor Parker burst out of the tank and revealed that it was all a social experiment to gauge how far the public was willing to go to “punish” him because of this scandal. Pan goes on to explain that eventually there was video evidence to prove the professor really did commit sexual harassment, but his stunt was an extreme example of “cancel culture” on the Internet. “In this Internet age,” Pan says, “malice is at the fingertips.”
During this speaking appearance in the auditorium, one of the students asks Pan about her involvement in covering the case of Jing and Li Yue falling from Binjiang Third Hospital’s rooftop. And that’s when “Malice” flashes back to 2019 for most of the movie. It should come as no surprise that different versions of what happened on that rooftop caused controversy and condemnations, fueled largely by social media influencers and traditional news reporters.
In 2019, Pan was the chief anchor/executive producer of a public TV news outlet called Evening Channel. And her husband Liang Guan (played by Huang Xuan) was the police captain in charge of investigating this case. At most legitimate news outlets, Pan would not be allowed to investigate the case, due to her spousal conflict of interest. But viewers soon see that Evening Channel isn’t exactly an ethical news outlet.
Pan’s boss Xiao Baoqian (played by Zhang Zixian) is obsessed with making the Evening Channel the media outlet with the largest audience (especially on social media) for this news story and for all news stories. Baoqian gives explicit orders to Evening Channel employees—including a producer named Haozi (played by Lei Songran) and Pan’s intern Chen Chen (played by Teresa Li)—to let them know that Baoqian’s top priority is increasing Evening Channel’s viewership, not ethical journalism. Therefore, Baoqian has no qualms about Pan pursuing this news story, which she is eager to do because she also cares about getting as large an audience as possible.
Pan also has an interest in the case because not long before Jing died, Pan had done an Evening Channel feature story on Jing, Qian, and Jing’s stepfather Wei Qiang (played by Li Xiaochuan), because the family was soliciting donations for surgery that Jing needed. Pan doesn’t ask her husband to compromise his police investigation by telling her what he knows. She wants to do her own independent investigation. She decides to go undercover by pretending to be sick so that she can check into Binjiang Third Hospital as a patient.
While in the hospital, Pan interviews several hospital employees about Yue, who has been already portrayed in the media as a murderous villain. It doesn’t help that Yue’s social media videos and photos revealed that she was struggling with depression and self-esteem issues. Pan finds out from hospital employees that Yue wasn’t very well-liked by her co-workers because people thought she was bossy and rude.
Yue was also the subject of gossip because she was having an affair with Dr. Meng Hao (played by Pei Kuishan), an older married man who was also Jing’s doctor at the hospital. And then, Qian tells Pan an exclusive bombshell: Not long before Jing died, Jing took a photo of Dr. Hao and Yue in a secretive lovers’ embrace at the hospital and had showed the photo to Qian and other people at the hospital.
Yue found out about that Jing took this photo, which caused a scandal where Dr. Hao and Yue were disciplined and their professional reputations were tarnished. Dr. Hao’s wife also caused a scene when she showed up at the hospital and physically attacked Yue. After the scandal, Qian says that Yue told Qian that Yue was suicidal, and Yue made a comment that Yue was going to hell and taking Jing with her. Qian believes this is why she thinks Yue murdered Jing.
Pan puts all this information in a story as exclusive breaking news on Evening Channel. A responsible journalist would’ve done more investigating. However, Pan is feeling pressure to be first with a major story about the case, so she doesn’t do enough fact checking or more investigation. This carelenessness will come back to haunt her.
Pan’s story increases the audience for Evening Channel, which has hired social media influencers to boost the channel’s online coverage of the story. However, some things happen that put Qian’s version of events into doubt. And even more secrets are uncovered that aren’t immediately apparent and won’t be revealed in this review.
Here are some details that can be mentioned without revealing the movie’s biggest plot twists: A young man named Dao Ye (played by Li Jiuxiao), using the alias Lord Dao, comes forward to defend Yue. In an exclusive interview with Pan on live TV, Dao saying that Yue was actually a wonderful person who helped him through a difficult time when he was suicidal and dealing with his biploar disorder.
Dao also says that when Yue got romantically involved with Dr. Hao, it was because Dr. Hao lied to her by saying he was divorced. Dao is outraged that Yue is being called a murderer by many people in the general public. The camera does a close-up of his face durng his interview as he says: “So I ask the 9 million people watching this: ‘Are you really that righteous?'”
Yue’s single mother (played by Ai Liya), who has been keeping a loyal vigil by Yue’s bedside, also says that Yue is not guilty of this murder accusation. Yue’s mother claims that Jing’s mother Qian is lying because Qian has a personal grudge against Yue. And then, a hospital surveillance video is found that puts Qian under suspicion. A medical examiner report also places doubt on Qian’s story.
At first, Pan gets some public criticism for being quick to make Yue look guilty. But in the media feeding frenzy for this case, her journalistic blunders are temporarily forgotten, as Pan admits she could’ve been wrong because of the limited information that she had at the time. Pan and other people following the case move on to other theories and possible “villains,” with the court of public opinion ready to convict someone before it’s determined whether or not a crime took place.
“Malice” has some realistic satire with montages portraying social media influencers trying to jump on the bandwagon with videos of conspiracy theories, condemnations of possible suspects, and performances of original songs about the suspects. This type of media circus is very true of what happens in real life with high-profile crime investigations. “Malice” also has scathing depictions of how people jump to conclusions based on their own personal biases, such as some people on social media saying that Yue is probably guilty, just because Yue came from a broken home where her father abandoned the family.
The movie stumbles when it tries to incorporate Pan and her husband’s relationship in the story. Although it’s easy to see why “Malice” wanted to add this layer of complication to Pan’s investigation, her husband isn’t in the movie enough to make a huge impact on the story. In real life, it would be a much bigger deal for a well-known TV reporter to be married to the chief police investigator of a case that the reporter is covering.
“Malice” has a flashback to another controversial news story that Pan covered in her past. In this news story, Pan did an exposé of people who were paid to give their “clean” urine that could be used by people who wanted to cheat in drug testing that uses urine samples. A tragedy happened as a result of that news story. This tragedy leads to the most soap-opera-like parts of the movie.
“Malice” is by no means perfect. The editing can be choppy, and the pacing of the story is often rushed. The movie also crams in a plot twist near the end related to Pan’s past drug-testing story that comes across as gimmicky. However, the acting performances are well-done, even for some of the two-dimensional characters, such as corrupt boss Baoqian. “Malice” is a fictional film, but it’s also a cautionary tale about real life: People who consume exploitative news stories about scandals are just as complicit in the exploitation as the people who report these types of news stories.
Niu Vision Media released “Malice” in U.S. cinemas on July 4, 2025. The movie was released in China on July 5, 2025.
