Phobia

I enjoyed this film very much despite having limited expectations. Each of the four segments plays out smoothly with few cheap scares and reasonably coherent plot development. That said, none of the chapters are particularly scary and it's all stuff we've seen before. What set it apart for me was the wry ingenuity of Man in the Middle and one small detail in The Last Flight - at one stage when the stewardess is serving the Princess, sunlight reflection from the aeroplane window moves slowly across the bulkhead behind as if the plane is banking. A nice touch. I can overlook that the galley interior is of a much larger plane than the 737 portrayed externally :-).

The 1st story fell right into my pool of likeliness. Delivering the story without a single dialogue was done well.

2nd story was all right but I really didn't like the editing such as lot of shaky camera, flashes all of a sudden and CGI was not so satisfying. Story and writing was okish.

3rd one felt like a drag to me from the beginning but felt a lot more in the middle, the actors acted wacky in times of fear but the ending was somewhat good or whatever.....

4th in my opinion didn't deliver as much, all could be predictable from the beginning.

For a Thai horror movie, then "Phobia" was a lukewarm experience, because it wasn't particularly scary.

The first segment, titled "Happiness", was the best of all four stories. It was also the most interesting story of them all. The director had managed to struck a nail with this story, as it was portrayed really well.

The second segment, titled "The Deadly Charm" had a nice story as well, though the CGI generated dead people looked like something made on a Commodore 64. That was really an eyesore to behold. For a tale of revenge, then it wasn't all that shabby.

The third segment, titled "The Man in the Middle", had an interesting enough story, with sort of a "The Sixth Sense" going on. However, the story was portrayed in a way to comical way, that really brought the story down to a childish level. And the way that the young men were behaving was also helping bring the story further down.

The fourth and final segment, titled "The Last Flight" was the second-most interesting story, and it had the most scare effect of all the four stories together.

The acting in all stories, except the third one (The Man in the Middle) was good, and you could easily get into the stories. However, the stories are fairly short, and they suffer under that criteria, which is a shame. As a aficionado of Asian horror movies, then I was looking forward to sitting through this, but the end result was a somewhat less than average experience, unfortunately.

That being said, I will still make it through the sequel, but more on that later.

There is no such thing as Asian horror. Even though there are plenty of common elements, each country has its own way of dealing with horror films, especially stylistically. 4bia is a new anthology project giving room to four Thai talents. The four stories are ever so slightly related, but stand well on their own and bring their own vision on what Thai horror has to add to the genre.

The first short is directed by Thongkonthun, a relatively fresh director with little experience in the horror genre. His short has a pretty conventional theme, being nothing more than a simple girl, ghost, haunt story. Still, the angle of the short is pretty special, as no actual dialog is being used. The girl is homebound and isolated from her friends and all conversations are held through sms contact. Not a first, as more and more films are trying to integrating digital communication, but still quite a novel experience.

Visually, the short is decent with several attractive shots, though the single setting does get a little boring after a while. We follow he girl in her room for the entire running time, only at the very end do we get some shots from outside. As a whole, the short is convincing enough and even though the story is extremely traditional, the execution makes it worthwhile. It's Thongkonthun's talent that keeps this film well away from falling into the boredom trap. 4* Next up is a short from Shutter director Pisanthanakun. Shutter was a pretty big Asian horror hit, but what Pisanthanakun puts on display here is different and easily the most interesting short of the bunch. The short is shot entirely as if making a trailer, including color bleeds, short freeze frames, hectic cuts and speed fluctuations. A true visual feast, sadly more and more cheap CG creeps in, resulting in a rather horrible and amateurish climax.

For those familiar with the Art of the Devil series, the story will hold little surprises, though the revenge theme of the film has been given a nice swing. The style of the film makes it a little hard to follow, but the basics are clear enough and the short looks really impressive. With a little tweaking on the CG part this would've been perfect, luckily this is easily forgotten when considering the rest of the film. 4.5* Third short is made by Wongpoom, co-director of Shutter. Again someone with some solid experience in the field of horror. And it shows. A completely different short than Pisanthanakun's, Wongpoom's film draws more to the likes of Craven's Scream trilogy. Four guys go rafting together, but when they all end up in the water things take a turn for the worse.

The atmosphere in this film is pretty relaxed, with little to no scares or creeps. To compensate, there's a thin layer of humor running underneath everything that happens, with a rather amusing (but possible frustrating) running gag spoiling the ending of at least three popular horror films (The Sixth Sense, The Others and Shutter), even throwing in Titanic for good measure. There are some genuinely funny moments, though I assume it's not as fun if you haven't seen the mentioned films yet. Visually a little underdeveloped, but since the focus lies on the humor that's easily ignored. 4* Sadly, the final short is the least interesting of the bunch. Even though none of the shorts bring something new to the table story-wise, they all have some interesting points of execution. Purikitpanya is the only one delivering a pretty standard horror fare, with a dead body haunting a stewardess on her flight home.

Purikitpanya shows a keen eye for composition from time to time, and the introduction of the princess (who ends up in the body bag) is pretty fun, but from that point on the short brings nothing but a bag of horror clichés. Purikitpanya's sense of style keeps it going until the end, but people who've seen their fair share of Asian horror films might be a little bored by the end of it. 3* All in all, the film presents four fun horror shorts, none of them below average, three of them come up with interesting elements. Thai horror is doing well for itself, and even though it's not quite yet ready to battle the better horror films coming from China and Japan, there's some real talent hidden away in here. A fun film for horror adepts looking for something outside the typical horror offerings. 4.0*/5.0*

So, I'm going to write a little mini review for each short as they show and as I see them and then do a review of the movie as a whole after..

story 1: Happiness effective little ghost story using texting as a medium where a recently deceased ghost talks to a home ridden young woman. I will say that this one is pretty creepy, some great shots are displayed and some cliché stuff is also used. I liked this one a lot for some reason, I usually don't get so into movies using cell phones as main plot devices, I.e. one missed call.

story 2: Tit For Tat Bad nu metal in Thai playing almost constantly, check. Attractive main cast bullies who picks on nerdy kid, check. Revenge story? Yes. This one plays out a little similar to another thai film, Art of the Devil 2 which I didn't enjoy too much. It's directed by the dude who did Shutter, which I also didn't like so much.. But despite the awful CG at the end, I enjoyed this one, it was fun and predictable. Predictable may be bad other places, but I enjoyed it here.

story 3: In the Middle I started out disliking this one.. Nu metal, kayaking, stereotypical teenage dudes.. But it's ripe with movie references, comedy that's actually funny, and a pretty decently creepy story. Based on other reviews I thought this might be a lot worse but I actually really enjoyed it.

story 4: Last Fright Probably my favorite of the 4 shorts just because it was built up so well. This one had the most 'classic' feel to it and was a lot of fun, I jumped on the inside a couple times and was into this one all the way through. Nice little Hitchcockian score also.

Anyway, Fun is the best way to describe this nice little anthology. I grew up on Tales From the Crypt and Creepshow and I'm recently in the past years getting more and more into Asian cinema so this is a film I've been looking forward to. Bottom line, it entertained me and that's all I need.

A great rental at least!