Point College

Title: Thai Horror Cinema

Assignment No.: 6

Date: 30/03/2015

Name: Lee Sweet Wan

Course: Introduction to World Cinema

THAI HORROR CINEMA (HORROR GENRE MOVIES)

I try to get to know more about the Thai Horror Movie so I watched three of them in a row. Phobia 2 is the first horror genre movie that I watched out of the three. It is a movie that combined with 5 short stories which is Novice, Ward, Backpackers, Salvage, In The End. Novice is a story that talks about a young man who accidentally killed his own father in an incident which he try to rope a car and throwing rock towards an oncoming car and finally realized that it was his father. His mother then send him to a temple for the purpose of hiding away from crops. When he first enter the temple he witnessed a ceremony which the monks feeding the ghost. When the night comes, he feels hungry and eats the food that was offering to the ghost indeed. The ghost feels offended and keep haunting him. Although he keep trying to run away from the temple and also he did calm himself down and realized the wrong he has done but just it is too late. The ghost didn’t just let him go and keep throwing rocks to his face. He then ends up dead.

Ward is a story that starts with a teenager who get injured in an accident and been requires to stay one night in the hospital. He asked for a single room but the hospital staff offer him to stay with a monk who is in a coma. When the night comes, he sense something weird and saw that the monk can moves by himself. He then asked for help from the nurse that in charge of the room but the nurse gives him some kind of injection that push him to sleep. Later, he awake from dream and he realized that the monk is stepping on his chest. He keeps fighting with the monk but lastly there is blood coming out from the monk’s mouth and it is morning now. The scene ends with the teenager who is sitting on a wheelchair and the

student of the monk and also some hospital staff bow to the teenager. It means that the monk successfully transfer himself into a new body.

Backpackers is a story about two Japanese traveler which is a girl and a boy who been stuck at the Thai countryside and no one wants to pick them up. The boy then waves his hand with money and with no doubt a big vehicle stops and pick them up. Unfortunately, being pick up on this vehicle is a bad dream for them. They discovered that the driver is a little bit weird because they heard some loud voice coming from the back. When the driver drives in an opposite direction stops his car and check for the back, they realized that it is full of dead bodies. The scene flash back and shows that the two driver is drug runner. They kept the drugs inside those people that inside his truck and wanted to keep them alive but they did not success. The Japanese boy grab a gun from the driver’s body and try to shoot them but he been attacked by the dead bodies which returns from dead and turns into zombie. Lastly, everybody dies except for one of the little zombie.

Salvage is a story which is about a woman who is an agent that sells car by rebuilding the damaged cars from accident. This is a bad business. Therefore, she gets her punishment. One day before she going back from her working place, she found out that her son is missing. She then looking for his son at those rebuilding cars but she realized that the victims of those accident all turns into ghost and haunting at her. She success to get in her car and run away while looking for his son. Her car’s engine sounds weird when she try to start it but as she is afraid she keep trying and trying until it success to start the engine. Lastly she found out that it was his son inside the engine.

In The End is a story that lead by four main character Puak, Shin, Ter and Aey. The story is about some film crew who are filming for their horror movie. They are shooting for the last scene of the movie. They have a talent named Kate who is a girl which act as the ghost in the movie. She collapse in the middle of shooting so Aey send her to the hospital. Later, the doctor tells Aey that his patient pass away. At the same time, Ter, Shin and Puak sees Kate returns to the set so they continue shooting. But then Aey calls Shin and tells him that Kate is dead. This scared the hell out of him and he secretly tells Puak and Ter about Kate’s dead but this heard by all of the crew on the set so they ran away and left Puak, Ter, Shin, Marsha (who is the protagonist in the film) and Kate. Ter decided to finish the last scene of shooting so that Kate can complete her last wish. They then ran away after finish shooting and left Marsha behind. They meet Aey before they drive away. Later when they see Aey’s car crashed at the roadside they think that he is a ghost too but he explained to them that he managed to get out from his car before the accident happened. In the same time, Kate appeared beside their car and tells them that she haven dead but just escape from then hospital and now she asked them to send her to the hospital. Their vehicle is out of petrol so they wanted to get some help from a car that driving towards them. They waved their hands but later realized that it was drive by sleepy Marsha. She didn’t realized them so finally her car crashed on all of them. Overall, this is a funny story.

Pee Mak is a 2013 Thai film which directed by Banjong Pisanthanaku who is also the director of Phobia 2 (In The End). The story starts with a pregnant woman who named Nak is waiting for his husband who is in the war. Unfortunately, she can’t make it for his husband returns because of the difficult labour. His husband who named Pee Mak meet his friend Ter, Puak, Shin and Aey when the war started. Pee Mak then returns from the war and he found that Nak is waiting for him. Everyone in the village knows that Nak is dead except for the five who just returns from the war. Mak asked his friends to stay together with him and his wife for some kind of vacation. Nak seems like doesn’t welcome four of them but still they start to stay there with Mak and Nak. One of the friend Shin can feels some weird feeling from Nak but he can’t tell what it is. The next day they want to buy some food from the market but everyone is avoiding Mak. Later, a aunty almost reveal the truth to them that Nak is dead but his son stops him. She just tell them if you want to know if the people is ghost you can see them between your legs. As time pass, four of them starts to suspect that Nak is a ghost. One day, when Ter going to poop in the tress, he saw a human skeleton buried inside the sand. He feels curious then wiped out the sand and he sees a ring on it. He then run back and want to tell his friends about what he saw but he was stink by bees so he can’t speak probably. He even get shocked harder when he sees that the ring is wearing by Nak. Therefore he now confirm that Nak isn’t a human. He writes down the truth “Nak is a ghost” and shows his friends and Mak walks in asked for the paper. After showing him the paper they run away from the house and packing to leave. While they are packing, the son of the aunty that almost reveal the truth tells them that the aunty is dead and Nak is the one who murdered her. They feels more fear about Nak. But then they don’t feel like leave Mak staying with a ghost so they decided to go back to the house and get Mak together with them. But they fail to do that

because they scare that Nak will do everything to stop them from telling Mak the truth. Nak then invite them for the dinner but what she prepared are all dead leaf and worms. Nak is trying to warn them and want them to care their own business. After a long night, they still stay with Mak but they didn’t just give up on bringing Mak away from Nak. In the same time, Mak piss his friends off because of saying that his wife is dead. He just ignore what other people think of them and still hangin gout with Nak. They been through a sweet moment. In the other hand, four of them kidnaped Mak. Nak finally can’t stand them keep split them up just because she is a ghost and Mak is human, she turns into the ghost form and chase after five of them. She don’t want to hurt them but just she is so sad that she can’t be with her loves one. Mak looks so sad on his face when he see Nak in ghost form but actually he already knows that Nak is a ghost before. He scare of ghost but he didn’t just run away from her because he wants to be with her. Four of his friend wa deeply moved by his feeling towards Nak and decided to not break them up. Lastly, they still lives a happiness life like before.

Make Me Shudder is directed by Poj Arnon. It is a story about a group of students who want to challenge themselves by entering the most haunted building of their school, which is forbidden. (This is the synopsis that comes from IMDB) The first scene started with five students who want to check for the ghost that in a building that collapsed to ruin. Fortunately, there’s nothing went wrong and they get back to home afterwards. They used to do things like this and they lead by a young boy who named Nick. He is a fearless boy which caused by his ignorant. The next day, Nick plan to enter the most haunted building of their school which written a board there “you can’t go in if you are not invited”. Nick fearless enough to ignore the board and leads his seven friends walk into the building. When they prepare going inside,

one of the boy who named James see weird things like there are two old peoples starring at them and also he see the ghost that jumped down from the building. He is the only one who see things before entering the building so no one trusts him for that and decided to keep walking. Later, they get regret because all of them witnessed that the ghost is really haunting them wherever they go. At first, Nick, James and Biu thought that the ghost is the people they asked to prank on the five others student but then they realized that no one in three of them asked for a friend to do about this so they know that this is the real ghost and start to escape from it. Unfortunately, they didn’t manage to do that. They then meet a teacher and she locked them inside a room. In the same time, there are two more teachers that looking for the students after they heard their screaming voices. The two teachers managed to find three of them but not the five that locked inside a room by the ghost teacher. This action reminds the three students who have not been locked up a rumor which says that there used to be a teacher who turns into anger and killed some of the students and teachers. In addition, their soul are still in this building. After that, the ghost teacher finally don’t satisfied with those students who she thinks they didn’t respect teachers and she transfer them into another place which is also the place where the murdered case happened. The 8 students meet all the victims there and all they can do is escape. The ghost teacher want them to die but luckily they got help from another two ghost teacher and also the ghost student who jumped down from the building. There is only the last step to the exit but Nick been caught by the ghost teacher. Her hand reach Nick and she started to choke him. The two ghost teachers advise her not to do so but she didn’t even listen to them. While the 8 students cannot stand to see their friend being hurt by a ghost so they started to apologize to the ghost teacher for what they have done so far. They sing a song which lyrics shows how thankful are they to the teachers. Finally, the ghost teacher get touched and let them go. The scene ends in the temple where the 8 students burn down the pictures of those victims and also the mad ghost teacher in the purpose of releasing their soul from suffering.

After the time of watching these Thai horror movies, I finally realized that they have a thing in common which is their moral value is quite strong. For example, in the movie Phobia 2 that combined with 5 different stories, I found every story of them will always try to reach us that you have to pay for what you have did wrong. Therefore, we may not do bad things otherwise we will get our punishment in several ways. I can tell that I’m addicted to horror genre movie but I don’t dare to watch Thai horror movie alone. This is because I found that they are quite realistic. What I mean realistic in this is you will feels that this is really happen in real life through their storyline and also their talent’s make up in the movie will always scared me out. Other than the moral value, some of the movie like In The End which is the short story in Phobia 2 and Pee Mak is quite scary but at the same time it is also funny. I love the humor that the director make in the movie. Sometimes they will use some funny words and sometimes the actor’s expression itself is so funny when they over react. Therefore this is why Pee Mak is the most favorite Thai horror genre movie of mine. I love its ending part where Mak reveals that he knows that his wife, Nak is a ghost all the time and he pretends that he doesn’t know it. In addition, he begs his wife not to leave and stay together with him. This is the first horror genre movie that I cried for it not because of the fearness but the sadness. I think that Thai horror movie is so success because they added so many elements in it like empathy, sadness, humor that will definitely make you laugh out loud instead of just added the fear that scare you out.