Bangkok Haunted
Director: Pisuth Praesaeng-Iam ("Legend
of the Drum" and "Black Magic Woman"), Oxide Pang (" Revenge")
Year: 2002
Starring: Pimsiree Pimsee (Jieb), Dawan Singha-wee (Pan), Kalyanut
Sriboonrueng (Gunya), Pete Thong-juer (Nop)
Time: 2 hrs 10 minutes
A film clearly has to be more than a few
memorable images that capture your imagination. I had seen the trailer for
this film a few months ago and was knocked out by it – a series of fast moving
images of an eyeless woman, a corpse in a morgue blinking, an eerie traditional
Thai dance, long razor sharp fingernails searching for a victim, a woman hanging
from a rope – that made the film look both exotic and inviting. Unfortunately,
after finally having the opportunity to see it the film’s quality does not
match those retina-retaining images. The film contains three supernatural
tales – all told by three modern women sitting around a table at a Bangkok
bar. One problem that the segments all have is they all run a bit long –
all over 40 minutes – and feel slightly padded. Another issue is that though
I thought all the stories had a definite potential, they somehow fell short
of it – either by ending on a lackluster note or simply not making a lot
of sense.
The word of mouth on the film has been pretty negative – in fact one web
site I came upon had a poll and 87% of the nearly 100 respondents voted that
they “hated it”. I can’t quite understand this reaction to the film – perhaps
I have suffered through too many Troublesome Night films, but I thought there
was a lot to enjoy here. The production standards are high, the cinematography
is excellent, the locales are interesting and the stories are intriguing
and original even if lacking in scares and finally being disappointing. The
first two episodes are directed by Pisuth Praesaeng-Iam while the final one
was directed by Oxide Pang.
Legend of the Drum (44 minutes) – Jieb accidentally receives an old drum
in a shipment that appears to have an angry history behind it. She begins
seeing apparitions and wonders if there is a connection to the drum. The
story flashes back to 1917 Bangkok in which a love between a Thai dancer
and a musician comes to tragedy – somehow the drum seems to have carried
a spirit inside that is looking for something – but exactly what is never
made clear.
Corpse Oil (40 minutes) – Pan isn’t having much luck of late with the opposite
sex and so when her not so attractive next door neighbor - who seems to have
lots of male lovers - tells her that it is due to a love potion, Pan skeptically
gives it a go. The results are amazing good – much too good it turns out
- the contents for the potion come from the local morgue and seem to carry
all the bitterness of their former owners. Be prepared for a lot of vomiting.
Revenge (45 minutes) – a policeman is sure that an apparent suicide of a
young woman by hanging has to be murder – where is the chair – why are there
marks of a struggle - and he sets out to find the killer. As he proceeds
it becomes clear that the ghost of the woman is helping – or is she? This
one had a pretty good plot and a clever ending that I didn’t see coming till
the very end and neither did the cop.
My rating for this film: 6.0