Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Had I Not Seen The Sun’ Part 2 on Netflix, where the mystery surrounding Li Jen-yao’s killings deepens

The first part of the Taiwanese thriller Had I Not Seen The Sun presented the idea that a serial killer is lamenting the lost relationship he had with his first love. In the second part of the series, that same killer is now an adult, and he is intrigued by a woman that strongly reminds him of that lost love.

Opening Shot: We see glimpses of someone cleaning up and bagging a scene where it looks like someone was just murdered.

The Gist:  Li Jen-yao (Tseng Jing-hua) is working in a job where he helps clean up places where people were found dead, often having to clean up blood and other bodily fluids that came out of the body that was there. As he’s cleaning, he hears the voice of a classical music DJ, Hsia Tien-ching (Alice Ko). She talks about when she became blind in high school, realizing all the goals she set for herself had to change.

The voice reminds him of his high school girlfriend, Chiang Hsiao-tung (Moon Lee), and after he hears her for a second time, he goes to the building where the radio station is. He follows her around until he speaks up when she’s about to bump into something. At this point, she invites him to have some dinner with her, which is where he sees the butterfly tattoo on her finger, in the same place where Hsiao-tung had one. At first, Tien-ching says she doesn’t remember how she got it, then says she was joking.

Still, Jen-yao is intrigued by Tien-ching, who tries to be cheerful and wants people to know that a disability doesn’t define her, but she is also very lonely. They start talking on the phone, then meet again for lunch, with Jen-yao leading Tien-ching to a place she’s unfamiliar with, and they seem to hit it off.

One of Jen-yao’s high school classmates, Chen Che-li (Lee-Fong Huang), is freaked out when he sees a vision of Hsiao-tung at the hospital during a prenatal visit with his fiancée. His guilt over what he and his friends did to her in high school, and how they paid her family off, seems to be stronger than ever, as he speaks to two of his high school friends. As he tries to find out about what happened to Hsiao-tung, though, he comes across some surprising information.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Like we said before Part 1,  Had I Not Seen The Sun feels like a cross between Silence Of The Lambs and Donnie Darko.

Our Take: At this stage in the series, Had I Not Seen The Sun has become more about what went on between Hsiao-tung and Jen-yao, and just how Hsiao-tung’s life changed in high school. Things are now playing out about a decade after high school ended for these characters, and Jen-yao may or may not be murdering people at this stage (he probably is). What is in the forefront of his mind, though, is what happened to Hsiao-tung.

We know he’s intrigued by Hsia Tien-ching mainly because of the coincidences and similarities between her and Hsiao-tung. He tells a colleague that she doesn’t look like his old high school girlfriend, but the tattoo is something that sticks in his head. Could they be the same person, with perhaps Hsiao-tung changing her appearance enough to look different to him?

It feels like the show’s writers will take the entire 10-episode length of Part 2 to examine just who Tien-ching is and what her relationship with Jen-yao informs the hows and whys of his killing spree. It’s certainly a more romantic direction than Part 1 took at first, and even this deep into the series, we’re still not sure if this combination of romance and serial killer thriller meshes well.

Performance Worth Watching: Alice Ko is compelling to watch as the lonely but always hopeful Hsia Tien-ching.

Sex And Skin: None.

Parting Shot: We see Tien-ching’s friend Chi-Chi looking at Hsiao-tung, who seems to have attempted suicide, as we see a screenshot of a sex scandal involving the Hsiao-tung.

Sleeper Star: Once again, Moon Lee’s presence as a ghostly Chiang Hsiao-tung is creepily effective.

Most Pilot-y Line: There’s a scene where a taxi supposedly carrying a private investigator crosses paths with Tien-ching and Jen-yao, and it carries more tension than it needs to.

Our Call: STREAM IT. The second part of Had I Not Seen The Sun leans more into the revenge part of the series’ plot than the bloodier serial killing plot. But it also presents a pairing that’s intriguing because of how mysterious it is.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.