tad bit of everything: thailand horror movies

i love thai horror movies. i thought at first korean horror flicks are the best but as i've watched quite a number of them they turned out boring in the long run and watching majority of them is like listening to someone talk and rant the whole time. so...me and my sister got engrossed downloading and watching thai horror movies.

there's something about their horror movies...weird...morbid...profound...for some there's a good

storyline, the actors/actresses never wear any make up (i don't know, maybe it's cuz that's how their culture is or should i say they go for the natural look on the screen). i love how they end their movies..with an old (LP sounding) track reminiscent to that of the 40's or something. i find it so cool and so asian to use old melancholic tracks while the credits scrolls on the screen. the only indie film i've seen so far in the philippines who did that would be this experimental/short film by raymond red called 'kamada' topbilled by the late francis m. take for example 'dek hor' (the dorm).

this recent thai horror flick i just watched called 'the house, ' it also ended with a poignant song with a triphop vibe to it (take this, triphop in thai vernacular). i don't know, but thai makes triphop quite eerier than the genre is already known for. i want make a quick review of the recent thai horror movies i just watched this week. tomorrow or should i say later on i'll check out this japanese horror movie called 'rafuto.'

THE HOUSE

the story evolved around this lady reporter who was assigned to do a feature story about a doctor who was jailed for murdering and dissecting his wife. yeah how gruesome. to make the long story short, all the dwellers of the said house were all known for killing their wives except for shalinee (the reporter & main character in the movie), she killed her husband and later on found that everything she sees was all in her mind and the villain was not actually her husband but her. the twist was unexpected and quite not supported. when her husband found her lying on the house while video taping the so called haunted house, she saw on the video (which was left switched on when she fainted) how this dark forces inhabiting the house devoured her husband. the question that i have on my mind is if he was the one who was possessed then how come shalinee was the who's demented? well...call it thai horror :)

4BHIA

i don't know why they called it 4bhia at first because it's read as four-bhia nor 'pho' (i thought maybe it's cuz the letter 'r' is not very used in thailand's dialect) but then as i watched the movie i realized it's because the movie was devided into four different stories (ala shake, rattle & roll).

part 1 - Ngao/Loneliness

a girl who was involved in a tragic cab accident was forced to stay home alone with her legs on cast for months one night when her avenging bf's spirit visited her. tragically, she fell off her apartments veranda.

part 2 - Yan Sang Tai/Deadly Charm

a gang of highschool kids killed their boy schoolmate when he unintentionally found weed on their stuff and when the school authorities learned about it had the gang suspended thus they did their revenge on the poor boy. the poor kid then cast a spell on his highschool foes and the spell tragically got all the gang members killed.

part 3 - Kon Klang /in the middle

a group of young college boys had camping and shared ghost stories one night in their tent. one of then cracked a joke and mentioned if he dies he will pay whoever is the guy who sleeps in the middle a visit. one tragic kayaking and one of the boys name 'ae' drowned. apparently, they were never able to recover his body. to make the story short, he died and paid his friends a visit, the rest of his friends found something weird about him and began having second thoughts if he's really alive. ~the twist in the story? they found out in the end that they all drowned and that their pal was only trying to tell them all that they all died after the kayakking incident.

part 4 - Teaw Bin 244/Flight 244/the last flight

flight attendant Pim, goes aboard an airliner on a charter flight for the Princess of Khurkistan. interesting...a royal couple once spent their honeymoon in phuket and took flight 224 after a year the princess/wife came back and took the same charter plane and requested for same staff who assisted her and his husband the first time they went to phuket.

i was able to figure out early in the movie that pim, the flight attendant had an affair with the princess' husband and she's even wearing the same ring that the princess was wearing during the flight. it's not surprising that the princess already knew pim even during the onset of the story because of her catty looks and bitch treatment towards her (she spilled her hot coffee and was too bossy and all). yadda..yadda..the princess died because she ate this food intended for pim and the rest of the airline staff. she died of allergy and complications since the princess was allergic to shrimp but insisted to eat other food excep for what's on the 'royal menu.' the princess haunted and killed pim in short. another avenging ghost.

what's the common denominator? blood, lots of it and characters falling off the building. but overall, it was an eccentric horror movie. that's why would love to see more of thai horror flicks. classic.

well, one of unusual days...it's payday saturday. i had groceries and cleaned our flat as usual, did the laundry...and my favorite...i ordered pizza for me and my sister. i decided to order yellow cab's 4 season pizza. it rocked. a combination of roast beef, shrimp, cheese and pepperoni.

i love it when the fridge is full. i bought a lot of sodas, apples for me (i read that apple is good for dieters since t contains pectin which has the ability to burn fat), wheat pandesal, black coffee and red tea. hah! i get a lo from reading articles online. it's just that diet foods are quite costly but i'd rather eat healthy although costly diet foods.

before i forgot, today is EARTH HOUR. so...i will join the rest of the world and switch our lights off at exactly 8:30-9:30 in the evening. let's do mother earth a favor even just for one day. a conscious effort to save our planet. let's do our share as much as we could...it won't hurt.