Midnight Hair

Mu Li Wei moves with his pregnant wife Le Xiaomei to a secluded mountainside villa owned by his friend A Ming. The house is decorated with odd paintings of two boys playing a string game, and there is a locked room that A Mu insists belongs to A Ming. They settle in, and the quiet mountainside begins to feel unnervingly oppressive.

Strange phenomena haunt the couple: a red doll seems to stalk Xiaomei, a music tape repeats the string game song, and a ghostly woman in a long white dress appears with hair obscuring her face. The red doll is disposed of by A Mu at Xiaomei's request, yet the paintings keep reappearing on the walls. A Mu also notices a woman in black robes watching him on his way to work, and the presence lingers in the corners of daily life.

The couple visits the orphanage where A Mu grew up to raise funds and learns about Xiaoshan, a quiet isolated orphan who died at age ten and was connected to A Mu's past. The story hints at a shared history between the two boys and foreshadows the secrets that will surface.

After a series of threatening boxes are left at their doorstep, A Mu installs security cameras around the house to monitor for danger. The couple's fear grows as they feel watched and isolated in the villa.

That night, Xiaomei reviews the security footage and sees a cloaked figure leaving the premises. Spurred by fear, she breaks into A Ming's room to search for clues about the figure and the hidden past.

In A Ming's room, Xiaomei discovers more paintings of the two boys and the disposed red doll, linking the present to the past. She is unnerved by the woman in white and, during a struggle, tugs at the woman's hair, slipping and falling down the stairs and suffering a miscarriage.

Back home after the hospital stay, Xiaomei presses A Mu to reveal the truth about Qingqing, a fellow orphan who had been close to him and later left him for a wealthy man. His answers begin to unravel a tangled history that binds their fates together.

Xiaomei learns that Qingqing was killed by A Ming, who justifies the act as retribution for her unfaithfulness and shows her the body the night before. She also receives another box warning not to comb hair at midnight, a superstition tied to Qingqing.

When Xiaomei does comb her hair at midnight, she summons the white-dressed woman, who reveals that A Ming does not exist.

From the orphanage files, Xiaomei learns that 'A Ming' is actually Xiaoshan, the son of two imprisoned thieves who were friends with A Mu. The dean protected A Mu, her grandson born out of wedlock, before dying of a heart attack while offering offerings for A Ming.

The woman in white appears to Xiaomei as Yu Xiaohan, Qingqing's younger half-sister, apologizing for the miscarriage. She explains that she wants Mu Kainan, A Mu's real name, to confess to Qingqing's murder and haunts him to coax the truth, claiming that people will tell the truth when frightened.

A Mu's struggle becomes a battle between identities as he drifts between A Mu and A Ming. In the Ming persona, he overpowers Xiaomei and seems to be implicated in Qingqing's murder and his grandmother's death, but memories of their relationship restrain him, and he ultimately decides to end his life to stop himself from harming Xiaomei further.

In the wake of the revelations, Xiaomei visits Yu Xiaohan in hospital to tell her that A Mu left money for Qingqing and Xiaohan to cover their bills and that she is not alone anymore. She then returns to A Mu’s orphanage and encounters a new girl, Yangyang, carrying the red doll. Yangyang sings the string game song, and a hand reaches out to grab the doll as the film cuts to black.