Soi-lát-daa-laen

Know what's scarier than figures lurking in the corner? The fact that your efforts to bring your family together become the very reasons they are slowly turning against you. While Sophon Sakdapisit doesn't do much to bring anything original to the haunted house yarn Ladda Land, he effectively ventures into each of his characters' psyche, turns them into real people with real concerns, and successfully fleshes out their fears — whether of this world or those of beyond.

The title refers to a middle class subdivision in Chiang Mai, where a well-meaning man played by Saharat Sangkapreecha moves with his family to work for a drug supplement company. He has another reason for wanting to stay there — his mother-in-law hasn't forgiven him for marrying her daughter (Piyathida Woramusik) and makes his life miserable by rubbing in his faults and failures as a father to his two children. He's especially estranged to his 14-year-old daughter (Apinya Sakuljaroensuk), who grew up spoiled by her grandma. But aside from that, everything's going well with the household — that is until a brutal murder occurs at a nearby house and scary things start happening.

It sounds standard but the narrative's arc from the near-perfect happiness of its characters and the world they inhabit to their slow and painful descent to paranoia and madness is near-perfectly smooth. Sakdapisit's skill in creating such trajectory is evident in how he begins the movie, with Sangkapreecha unpacking things and meticulously decorating the house, signifying his desire to start a new life for his family. It's a stark contrast to how it all ends, with bare and empty rooms except for a few objects thrown around, underpinning the tragic outcome despite the best intentions.

There's convincing performances from everyone involved, too. Sangkapricha plays it with such subtlety that even when his character acts like an idiot as required of horror films (Why not call the police first instead of venturing into a murder site alone?), he never comes off as annoying. Woramusik and Sakuljaroensuk's characters are also defined more than other horror movies care to carve out secondary roles.

As a horror film, Ladda Land teeters midway between the best to reach these shores and the worst of them. What's certain is that it works better when it focuses on the family rather than on the spooky things that go bump in the dark. It's wise enough to invest emotionally and ratchets up the tension so well that it even if it doesn't consistently bring in the scares, there's a constant feeling of anxiety.

And by pure horror a mean Thai horror - the master and king and ruler of them all horrors! This movie and/or story is for all you horror and suspense fans. It's also for all you drama fans and family love fans. And, last but not least: No electric special effects, no animations, only some masks.

The story is pretty simple. A mid-young (over thirty) husband and father of two moves the family from Bangkok to another city in a nice suburban area called Laddaland. The area is, of course, guarded and fenced - a typical artificial "safe" place.

He is the only employed member of their family with somehow steady job that allowed him this move in a first place (mortgage,wife not employed anymore).

One day, brutally mutilated body of a young girl is found in one of the houses in the neighborhood, and soon after that, strange things begin to happen and the story slowly begin to unravel. But, the more we go in to the scary minutes and hours of the movie, the more is the story overflown with personal grief, money problems, job loses, anger, personal depression, lack of acknowledgment and LOVE. We start to see that it's all just one horror story, here and now, and they are the only ones that can say NO to it.

And the less they resist the more they are drawn in to the world of depression, sadness and hate.

All the ghost that are scaring are just the modern alternative to Zombies:"The ghosts of Capitalism!" As I said, this is a movie that uses RAW power to remind us about the current situation in the world is already exactly like in this movie, except without ghosts. If you don't call beggars and homeless Ghosts....

I highly, highly recommend it!

PS

It's more Drama then Horror ;)

It's good. Not bad. Not something that I would highly recommend either. It's just another horror movie of family move into a new home, ghost, haunted,.. Yup. That's all.

Good acting though.

If it's a weekend and a rainy night, this would be a good film to watch.

Now keep in mind it uses subtitles so you do need to watch and read.

And the first 5 minutes of the film is filled with so much family cheesiness that you could eat mac n cheese for weeks. But allow the story to build and you will be in for a surprise.

Cinematography is better than anything found in current films from USA. Acting is much better as well.

This movie could, and should have scored an 8. I haven't seen anything as gloomy in this in a long time. You really have an empathy for the characters & wish them nothing but a happy outcome. Do they get one? That would be a spoiler too far.

I mentioned earlier it should have scored an 8, the reason it didn't was because I felt more effort into making the ghosts look like, well ghosts! Most of the time they just look like actors that are acting ghostly, instead of using special effects to make them creepier.

This is a story of a new life with new prospects that go completely wrong. The acting is superb and the whole viscaral feeling of the movie is almost claustrophobic. It's a brilliant film that I would recommend to those that don't just look for blood, gore & cheap jump scares.