Bangkok Haunted

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

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

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

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.

For an Asian movie about hauntings, then "Bangkok Haunted" was quite dull and anything but scary, actually. And this is an anthology of sorts, as the movie contains three different stories - all of which, mind you, are nowhere near impressive or scary.

The first story is about Jieb who receives an ancient drum from a shipping company, although she didn't order it. The drum is tied to a tragic story where a young dancer named Paga falls in love with Fond. And while a misshapen man named Gnod loves her, and doesn't have his love returned, he sort to a final, drastic measure to keep her with him. This story was actually the best of the three, but it wasn't particularly impressive in itself.

The second story is about Pan, a woman who will do anything to find real love. Finding out about a strange essence that her neighbor uses to lure in men, Pan decides to give this a try. Little does she know that the essence is created with the blood of the recently departed. And those under the influence will come back from the dead if they die while under its charms. This story was adequate, but just didn't really make much sense.

And the third and final story is about a police officer who is investigating a case of a hung woman, which he believes is suicide and not murder. Well, this turned out to be more of a love story than an actual ghost story.

Overall, then "Bangkok Haunted" is fairly weak and doesn't even remotely have the usual level of horror and scares founds in Thai horror movies. And if you enjoy these kind of anthologies, then there are far better choices available on the movie market.

I like how the movie has this branded on the DVD cover: "eerie and disturbing, each one of these stories is sure to curdle your blood and chill your spine..." Right, indeed, I guess the one who wrote that haven't watched particularly many Thai horror movies if he or she found these three stories to be blood curdling and spine chilling.