A Place Called Silence 3 is finally out, and I just hadn’t managed to find the time to see it. So today, in the middle of a busy stretch, we carved out a little break, left our kid with grandma, and my wife and I hurriedly booked tickets. We had both seen the first two films and thought they were pretty solid, so there was no way we were going to skip the third one.
Before heading to the cinema, though, we still had a few things to take care of—mainly getting rid of some digital devices and electronics we no longer used: a Xiaomi laptop, a Mijia air purifier, and a pair of Beats headphones. My wife placed the order through Aihuishou, but for these items we had to bring them in ourselves. Only phones were eligible for home pickup.
What really stood out was how long the whole process took. From the time we handed everything over to the moment the payment came through, it was about an hour and a half, which honestly felt pretty slow. The actual inspection was quick—basically all done within ten minutes—but after that there was still a lot of waiting before the payment step. Most of the time was just spent sitting around, and we couldn’t even leave early because we had to stay there and scan a code at the end.
The resale values were also a little painful. The air purifier had originally cost over 1,000 yuan, and even with a coupon the trade-in price was only 140. My 13.3-inch Xiaomi laptop was valued at just a bit over 300. Really not worth much at all.
Still, we were out of space at home and had no real use for any of it anymore. Some people might ask why not just list everything on Xianyu instead. I actually did try that before, with local pickup only. There was one buyer, but he wanted free shipping. For something that large, on an item I was already selling cheaply, covering shipping too would have left me with almost nothing.
And to be honest, I’ve had bad experiences selling big items there before. Once the package reaches the buyer, that’s when they start nitpicking every little thing and trying to bargain the price down further. If you refuse, they threaten to reject it and make you pay to ship it all the way back. That kind of thing barely affects the buyer, but it’s incredibly frustrating for the seller. For large items, the round-trip shipping cost can eat up most of the money anyway, so you often end up giving in and accepting less. After dealing with that a few times, I decided I’m done selling bulky stuff there.
Once we were finished with the trade-in, we realized we still hadn’t eaten lunch. After a quick discussion, we decided on KFC—simple and fast. We ordered a combo with three burgers, two chicken wraps, plus fries and red bean pies. We both eat a lot, so that felt about right. In less than ten minutes, we had basically wiped it out. We were full, though not quite completely finished. I even joked that the meal would’ve been even better with a bottle of Lao Gan Ma on the side for dipping.
After eating, we checked the time and realized we still had some room to spare. The theater was only about a two-minute walk away, so we went into the nearby arcade and used up some leftover tokens from before. We squeezed in a few rounds of racing games, motorcycle games, co-op stages, basketball, and a bit of everything else. In the end we still hadn’t used all the tokens, but time was running short, so the whole arcade session felt rushed—almost like a speedrun.
When it was almost time, we ran over to the cinema. We had bought a pair ticket through Douyin, and it came with popcorn and Coke, which worked out nicely since we hadn’t ordered drinks at KFC. By the time we got there, the movie had already started, though not by much.
As for the movie itself, here are my thoughts purely from the perspective of someone who likes suspense films.
Overall, I thought it was pretty good—especially compared with the second installment. The cast also included several actors I personally like, which definitely helped. About halfway through the film, I found myself thinking that there really do seem to be more and more movies lately dealing with human trafficking. In the film, all the villains get the punishment they deserve, but when you look at real life through that lens, things obviously don’t work out so neatly. What the movie shows is, in many ways, a kind of wish fulfillment—the justice people want to see.
That said, the movie still gave me a lot of surprises along the way. I liked the voice work, and I liked how the characters were presented. Compared with the first two films, this one feels more chaotic, though I also found myself breaking down who, exactly, was “killed by mistake” in the story:
- 23 children were mistakenly killed, suffocated to death by carbon dioxide;
- Shi Fu’an’s wife and child were mistakenly killed, because Zheng Bingrui believed it was the Shi couple who had kidnapped his daughter;
- Zheng Bingrui’s childhood friend Wuhu was mistakenly killed, after a child took the bomb remote and the device was detonated during the struggle.
My overall feeling is that the film sometimes seems a little too intent on being suspenseful for the sake of suspense, or dramatic for the sake of drama. But it’s still a movie, and no film can do everything perfectly. With that in mind, I can understand it and accept it. For me personally, within this type of film, it’s already a fairly successful one.