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

As with most people familiar with Oxide Pang, my introduction to this movie came through the creepy spook film, "The Eye". I was genuinely impressed with The Eye, and, eager to find more films by Oxide and his brother Danny, i came across Bangkok Dangerous and Bangkok Haunted. Dangerous is a flick about a mute assassin, which i found to be very well made with some excellent editing and solid direction. Unfortunately, Bangkok Haunted failed to impress. I only found out after viewing the movie that only the third segment was directed by Oxide Pang, and Danny (the man behind the brilliant editing in Dangerous) had nothing to do with the film. From the start the movie attempts to creep out the audience, but the elaborate ghost stories are neither scary nor visually impressive. Throughout the three segments of the film, the spooks fail to spook, and the film fails as a horror flick. Clocking in at over two hours, this is an over-stretched movie that could have fitted easily into three half hour segments. While there are promising thing to be taken from the film, the stories are generally boring and more laughable than scary. This film could have been alot better, and i am glad that i rented it instead of rushing out to buy it.

Three women are telling three unrelated ghost stories in Bangkok Haunted.

First `Legend of the Drum ` about a modern girl receiving by mistake an old drum and spirits showing her what happened to a beautiful dancer and a deformed guy whose not corresponded love for the girl ends up with tragic consequences. Second `Black Magic Woman' about a women so desperate for love that he resources to some magic lotion, not knowing it is made with dead people fluids, and kill those to whom it was applied.

Last and not least `Revenge' about a cop investigating the dead of a beautiful woman was nothing is what it seems. This one is the most complex and twisted of the group; also the one with less chills.

The first two parts were directed by Pisut Praesangeam and the last one by Oxide Pang Chun (creator of The Eye); it is easy to notice different styles, but there are some common elements on all of them, keeping an unity, atmosphere and an average quality on the whole movie. The camera work and character development are very interesting. The acting is acceptable.

Ghost appear everywhere, every time; but most of the time as part of the background, not relating with the characters. This creates some gratuitous but welcome chills in the spectator, compensating the overall slowness of the movie. Yes; pace is quite slow, and is not an horror movie in the standard sense; so those looking for gore or violent images will be somewhat disappointed, however this is not a psychological thriller either; blood and some violent killings or rotten bodies sporadically happen but never in a `Friday 13th' excess.

Conclusion: This is not gore, terror intensive Evil Dead nor a quiet 6TH Sense or The Others; it will not give you the creeps but will intrigue you enough to keep you in your seat for two hours and ten minutes.