Phobia

what a stupid title... this movie starts off with a surprisingly well done title sequence that uses blood as its main motif... it was elegant.

i was impressed by how great the first 'mini film' was shot. it looked great. The tension was excellent throughout and the almost-total lack of any dialog was interesting and ambitious.

the second 'mini film' is exceedingly bad... the flashy editing was distracting and seemed to be included only to cover the thin script. the "terrifying finale" of the whole thing centers around a horribly executed cgi zombie-looking character. who uses cgi to make zombies?!?! this is the worst of the 4.

the third one was a lame and mildly homo erotic attempt at a 'self-referential' horror movie (in the vein of 'scream' maybe?) not scary, not funny, totally forgettable.

the last one was great! incredibly effective thriller about a flight attendant that has to deal with one of the most terrifying scenarios that i can remember seeing in a movie. it grabs you and doesn't let you go... great acting too by the lead actress.

in closing, you gotta take the good with the bad i guess...

1 is good, 2 is god-awful 3 is bad 4 is great.

I had the pleasure of watching this Thai anthology tonight. 4 separate stories without a wraparound. I was pleasantly surprised.

The first story is about a woman and her cell phone and all of a sudden someone messages her out of the blue. She is kind of lonely so she gets right into it and the texting gets out of hand until she finds out that... well I won't spoil it for you but let's just say one part in particular gave me shivers big time. It's a little more original than your average cell phone horror fare.

The second story is about high school kid who is bullied and decides to get revenge. The best way I can describe it is that it's like a "Final Destination" inspired MTV music video but it gets better towards the end, where it gets gory and despite the bad CGI it's definitely worth a watch.

The third story is about 4 teens who go white water rafting in the jungle. It is chock full of movie references and it is HILARIOUS! I laughed out loud quite a few times. Very enjoyable, and of course in keeping with the theme of the anthology it has horror elements to it as well. It was fun watching some of the movie references tie in with the story.

The fourth is definitely the weakest of the bunch. It has a few jump scares and a lot of clichés and not much else. It reminded me of a bad episode of Tales From the Crypt or the new Twilight Zone.

All in all a good anthology that I believe stands up beside any of the V/H/S or similar titles coming out nowadays. 7/10

4Bia, actually title PHOBIA, is a pretty predictable Asian horror anthology, I was mildly entertained but there were no surprises here; those well-versed in Asian horror will see most of the "shocking twists" coming from a mile away. Now that doesn't necessarily mean the film is bad, it just means Thailand has the same problem we do…played-out predictability sells well in theaters. If this were to have been released in the U.S., it would have ended up going straight-to-DVD. This isn't a bad flick, I actually enjoyed "Tit for Tat" and it's stylish CG and the goofy horror comedy of "In The Middle" but nothing really jumped out at me as original or different. It's all pretty average, a "been there, done this" experience indeed.

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 :-).

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.