Movie Review: Bangkok Haunted (2001) directed by Pisuth Praesang-Iam & Oxide Chun Pang
We open on a moving truck in the Thai countryside, heading for Bangkok. The man sitting in the back taking care of the packages gets scratched by…something. The moment he realizes he’s in a horror story, he jumps out the back of the truck, which would ordinarily be a stupid thing to do, but in this case makes him the smartest person in the movie. (Looks like he survives, anyway.) The driver isn’t shown to be concerned about the disappearance of his partner when he delivers the boxes to Jieb (Pimsiree Pimsee), who I think is a grad student. Among the boxes is one that doesn’t belong to her, which contains an antique drum of a style favored before World War Two.
Jieb calls in her professor, and we flashback to the tragic tale of Paga (also Pimsiree Pimsee). Paga was a young orphan adopted by a music/dance teacher and trained to become a traditional style dancer. She developed a bond with the teacher’s deformed son Gnod, who was good at neither music nor dance, but a skilled woodcarver. When Paga has matured into a beautiful young woman, she is courted by the handsome Fond, and finds him agreeable. Unfortunately, while Paga loved Gnod like a brother, he loved her in a different way, and became violently jealous. On the night of Paga’s engagement to Fond, she and Gnod disappeared and were never seen again.
In the present, the antique drum seems to be the center of bizarre events, and eventually Jieb learns the full story behind the events, with dangerous repercussions.
It’s at this point we learn the movie has a framing sequence of three women in a Bangkok coffee bar trading horror stories. Jieb has left the end of her tale a bit ambiguous, and the other two woman complain about that.
The second story features Pan (Dawan Singha-Wee), a sexually frustrated young woman. She’s not thrilled when her next-door neighbor brings home a man and she can hear them having wild sex through the wall. Pan is surprised though, when she wakes up the next morning and the neighbors are still at it. The neighbor attributes her success, and multiple husbands she’s outlived, to “Ply Essence”, an aphrodisiac perfume. She has a drop left for Pan to try.
Pan manages to snag a random hookup at the club that night, and the sex is awesome, but the man falls ill the next morning. Maybe there are side effects?
While waiting for her own bottle (there are supply issues–and the audience gets to see the secret ingredient, it’s just as gross as you were expecting), Pan gets a hankering for Tim, a handsome fellow who takes the same ferry to work that she does. Too bad he seems to have a girlfriend!
Once she has her supply of Ply Essence, Pan decides to overuse it in a non-recommended way. Good news is, she’s now with Tim forever. Bad news is, she’s now with Tim forever.
The final story has handsome police detective Nop (Pete Thongchua) investigating the death of Kanya (Kalyanut Sriboonrueng), a woman found hanged from a rafter. It’s been ruled a suicide, but Nop notices the evidence doesn’t support that. The chief is absolutely convinced it’s a suicide and tells Nop to drop the case. In the tradition of cowboy cops everywhere, Nop continues his investigation on the down low. Was it Vinal, Kanya’s abusive husband, or her secret lover In? The careful viewer will probably spot the significance of some clues before Nop does, but the real solution to the case is still a shocker.
The supernatural elements in this last story are very minor, and it could have worked as a straight police thriller (very Alfred Hitchcock Presents), but put the story in a very different context by being present.
And there’s a last twist in the framing sequence.
Good: Watching foreign horror movies is always an adventure. The filmmakers bring their own culture to the table, with their own ideas of what’s scary and what’s “normal.” They might have taken on ideas and craft from Hollywood, (there are Nightmare Before Christmas and Fiddler on the Roof t-shirts visible) but with their own accents and innovations. This movie does that very well, especially with the use of traditional Thai music in the first story. The cinematography is good, and I thought the acting worked well.
Less Good: The editing uses a lot of freeze-frame transitions that made me think for the first couple that my DVD player was stalling, and kept irritating me thereafter. Not revealing the framing sequence until after the first story confused me. Several actors appear in multiple segments, causing questions about whether they were playing the same characters in each or just keeping cast cost down.
Political: The third story looks like it’s going into “copaganda” (police officers do unethical/illegal things and are treated by the story as though they’re the heroes for doing so) territory, but by the end it’s an ACAB story.
Content note: Oh Lordy. Gore, death, closeups of wounds and internal organs, body horror, forced abortion, suicide. Female toplessness, on screen extramarital sex (no genitals), dubious consent sex. Vomiting, other body fluids. Ableism. You’d better have a strong stomach.
Overall: A very good horror film with a couple of irritating flaws. Recommended to horror fans who are okay with the gore and can handle subtitles.
