Bangkok Haunted

I thought the movie was fantastic. The scares weren't over-the-top at all; neither were they overused. Some horror fans will be disappointed by the lack of many, but I thought that when the scares DID come, they were fantastic. Oxide and Pisuth definitely know when to utilize a scare within a certain scene and I thought this movie was just overall, amazing. Great stories, good endings, and awesome cinematography.

The only negative that I can give is that the stories were slightly confusing, but definitely not impossible to understand. And characters are used over and over again in different stories, so it was sort of hard to follow characters when they were someone else in a different story. But like I said, another watch-through, and it cleans up all the loose ends. This movie would definitely be useful to watch during a night with some friends over, so that discussion can follow and clear up what you missed. Awesome movie, but don't expect many scares--just like 28 Days Later, this serves as more of a drama horror film, rather than a true horror one.

Three young women gathered in a coffee bar in Bangkok tell and discuss three original ghost stories with each other:

1) The Ancient Drum: In Bangkok, the young Jieb receives an ancient drum not listed in the order from the truck of Transportation Company owned by Mr. Anake. She calls her former Professor Arkom, who identifies the markings for good luck that she describes and tells the story of the orphan Paga. In 1917, the renowned music teacher Jangwah-Chuem and his wife Peng raise the beautiful Paga with their deformed son Gnod. Paga is a good and loving sister and daughter and becomes a great beautiful dancer. When Paga falls in love for the handsome Fond, the jealous Gnod and she vanish from their village. Jieb investigates the mystery of their disappearance and discloses the eerie truth with tragic consequences.

2) The Love Potion's Price: The gorgeous Pam receives a sample from her next-door neighbor of a love potion ("Ply Essence") that makes the user irresistible to men. Pam does not know that the essence is made of blood of dead women and uses in a man in a night-club, who becomes an insatiable lover. When she uses in her acquaintance Tim, she finds the price of the aphrodisiac.

3) The Revenge of the Dead: Detective Nop is in charge of the investigation of the death of a woman called Gunaya found hanged in a distant storeroom. He does not accept his chief position of suicide and he is convinced that it is a murder case. He investigates the husband of the victim, Vinal, and her former boy-friend In. When he believes he has solved the case, there is a twist with tragic consequences.

I am a great fan of the Pang brothers and I liked "Bangkok Haunted". The first tale has a promising beginning, an excellent development and a disappointing conclusion. It is funny that the three friends make the same comment in their conversation. The second tale is creepy, in spite of the lack of explanations about the love potion. The last one has a promising beginning, an excellent development, but I was confused about the relationship of Gunaya with Nop. I understand that she has plotted revenge against her abusive husband; her cruel lover, but it was not clear for me how was her connection with Nop. I intend to revisit the last minutes of this story to check if I have not seen any important detail. The DVD is spoken in Thai with English subtitles and I need to pay too much attention reading the lines. The surprising conclusion, showing how haunted Bangkok is, is excellent. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): Not Available

I had watched "The Eye" before I watched this one. I really liked "The eye", it was one of the best movies of the recent Asian horror-cinema. So, I picked this "Bangkok haunted" because it was the same director, and it was kind of popular round here. But man, what a disappointment... "Bangkok haunted" are three stories about love, revenge, ghosts, etc. that are no scary at all, not even disturbing (as "The eye" was)... no nothing. I can't even fill the 10 lines required for the comment...

100% boring.

*My rate: 2/10

I saw this movie some time ago, hoping it was going to be as good as The Eye was, but I was greatly disappointed to see that the stories weren't very good and the scares were lacking. Don't bother checking this expecting another The Eye.

We have a very strong start as we open upon a story that is sort of like an Asian phantom of the Opera with incest. A young girl and her brother live happily in a small village until one day traveling visitors bring a man the girl starts to fall in love with. Her jealous brother, with a deformed face he always hides, decides to wreak havoc, and the ghost of the young girl gets endowed into a drum that travels the country haunting whoever happens to be close by.

Tthhhheeeeennnn the movie reveals that it's just a story being told, and that three young Thai women at a restaurant are telling each other ghost stories. The thing about these types of narratives is that they fundamentally ruin the point of the stories in the first place. Horror is made to terrify, right? So how can we appropriately fear for characters' lives and souls when we know they're fake? Even beyond the level of fakenss inherent in any medium, we now are twice removed from the characters' psyches: once because we're actually watching a television screen, and twice because we're watching characters tell stories about characters that don't exist diagetically.

Worse, the next two stories turn out to have that wonderful flavor of, "Huh, I've heard variants of this before." Yep, suddenly we move away from the interesting story (which also, interestingly, had much better dialog, direction, cinematography, and just about everything) that held our attentions for 40 minutes, and then we follow two other stories for another hour and a half that are, when you break it down, merely urban legends.

Gee, and I was so enjoying the beginning.

To be fair, the third story isn't THAT bad, and since it's a mystery it's a little nice to follow. But the second story is just soo boring! It's very disappointing to be enjoying yourself and then have the director say, "Okay, so, we're done with that, now to move on!" Two things you should never do in a horror movie because it's no longer fresh and now it becomes slightly insulting: never have it end up being just a dream, and never have it end up being just a story.

--PolarisDiB