Stream It Or Skip It?

In the Taiwanese limited series Had I Not Seen The Sun on Netflix, a young filmmaker’s assistant finds herself drawn to a serial killer in more ways than one. She finds herself attracted to him, but she also sees a young girl that no one else does. Is she a victim of the killer?

Opening Shot: “2014.” Moths flitter around a street light as we pan down on an isolated noodle shop. A hooded man orders from the young owner. We then cut to the hooded man, his face splattered with blood, and the owner breathing his last breaths, his throat having been cut. It starts to rain.

The Gist:  We see news reports of various brutal murders, all happening during rainstorms. Then we hear that 25-year-old Li Jen-yao (Tseng Jing-hua) turned himself in, admitting he was the “Rainstorm Killer.”

In 2023, Chou Pin-yu (Chaing Chi) wakes up from a vivid dream. She stumbles through her still-mostly unpacked boxes in her new apartment, which she finds out is haunted when she runs into new neighbors in the lobby. She works at a company that produces documentary films, and she’s assisting director Hsu Ta-wei (Umin Boya) on a documentary abut Li Jen-yao. Miraculously, Jen-yao has agreed to talk to her.

When she goes to the prison to talk to Jen-yao, Pin-yu is taken with the handsome and charming killer, and tells her cousin that he’s “not as bad” as people say he is. All the while, she’s no only envisioning herself sleeping with Jen-yao, but she’s also seeing a girl in a school uniform (Moon Lee), clear as day when she’s awake.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Had I Not Seen The Sun feels like a cross between Silence Of The Lambs and Donnie Darko.

Our Take: Had I Not Seen The Sun gets off to an intriguing start in its first episode, mainly because Li Jen-yao doesn’t tend to reveal a lot; when he’s interviewed by Pin-yu and Hsu Ta-wei for the documentary, he tells them he killed these people because “I hate rainy days.” He certainly isn’t going to spill everything during the first interview, and the more Pin-yu talks to him, the more she’s going to be entranced by him.

There’s also the story of Chiang Hsiao-tung, the girl in the uniform that Pin-yu keeps seeing. There is a connection between her and Jen-yao, and subsequent episodes are going to show exactly what that connection was, going back to their high school days. As we explore those days, Pin-yu will be in 2023 trying to figure out just who this girl she keeps seeing is.

It’s definitely a plot that has a lot of story possibilities, with Pin-yu trying to figure out just why Jen-yao started killing his old classmates, mainly via the visions she has of Hsaio-tung.

Performance Worth Watching: Tseng Jing-hua is effectively charming and menacing as Li Jen-yao.

Sex And Skin: None.

Parting Shot: Pin-yu sees a reflection of Hsiao-tung in a mirror as she talks to her cousin on the phone about seeing the girl while shooting a scene in the rain.

Sleeper Star: Moon Lee is pretty creepy — but also very sad at the same time — whenever Hsiao-tung shows up in Pin-yu’s life.

Most Pilot-y Line: After Jen-yao remarks that he killed because he doesn’t like rainy days, an angry and frustrated Hsu Ta-wei shoves his equipment in the trunk of his car and tries to slam the lid shut, only for it to bounce open again. We wonder if that was planned or not.

Our Call: STREAM IT. The first episode of Had I Not Seen The Sun sets up an interesting dual story about a serial killer’s high school years and how a filmmaker connects with one of his victims years later.

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.