Bor Mi Vanh Chark

Technically this is a ghost story and has been marketed as such (I saw it on Shudder), but that does not give the whole picture at all. If I had to pick one sub-genre to classify this film I would have to say it's a time-travel movie and even that is woefully inadequate. Empirically you might also call it a Serial Killer movie, but again that would be technically true but missing the point entirely.

This is a very mediative film that deals with the consequences of grief and how 'helping' other people (or spirits) is often simple selfishness. It depicts a cycle of behaviour that can be difficult to break and it's debatable whether the action in the movie has actually broken that cycle.

To me this is Nacho Vigalondo's 'Timecrimes' mixed with Ray Bradbury's 'A Sound Of Thunder' mixed with Buddhist philosophy telling a tale about the selfishness of grief.

I think this is excellent.

First time watch a Laos movie. The topic is quite interesting with the spirit and time travel. The most important it's quite scary and lots of questioning what actually is happening during the movie.

This film is more than a simple ghost story transcending time and space, it's a story of love and past regret that refuse to die and move on. Well done.

Since he was a small boy, a ghost of a woman killed in a road accident has visited the now elderly, isolated and, it turns out, sinister Laotian hermit living somewhat out of his depth in the technically advanced future. The ghost can take him back to his youth, where he meets his young self so that he can tutor the boy to help his mother relieve her suffering due to a painful terminally illness.

Beautifully photographed, definitely slow burn and frankly a bit tricky, this is an intriguing, very different ghost story with shades of science fiction which moves seamlessly between time periods avoiding a linear telling of the tale. This type of creative storytelling can be irritating and clunky, but here it works well in raising the tension to see how things will be resolved. It is from time to time also quite grisly and occasionally very moving. It does not though neatly tie everything together as much as perhaps some would like at the end, but it is a haunting experience and a film you won't forget.

This movie is a slow burn but well worth your time if you're in the mood for a contemplative and haunting experience.

There's a lot going on here and I won't give anything away, but suffice it to say there's a lot about guilt, duty, regret, family, and other universal human concerns here.

Don't expect gaping-faced ghosts and jump scares, this isn't that kind of film. This film is about the haunting that comes from what we do in life, how it reverberates, and whether, in the religion/spirituality of the film, those reverberations affect us and others in other lives.

You won't necessarily be scared, but if you give it a chance you might just be haunted by what the film reveals as it unfolds. The acting is great, and the lead actor is superb in the way he has a face that seems to elicit sympathy but also has a mystery to it, leaving the viewer wondering who he is deep inside. As the film progresses that question gets more and more difficult to answer.

My favourite part of the film was the recurring motif of walking a road. Will we ever find peace, or are we doomed to walk the same road for all of eternity?

One line will stay with me, when one character asks another about a ghost and where he seems to disappear to. - "I don't know where he goes." - Do any of us know where we go?