• Written and directed by Yuthlert Sippapak
• Starring Supassara Thanachat, Charlie Potjes, Chalermpon Thikampornteerawong, Yok Teeranitayatarn, Aphichan Chaleumchainuwong, Thana Wityasuranan, Triwarat Chutiwatkhachorachai, Navin Yavapolkul
• Released in Thai cinemas on May 5, 2016; rated 18+
• Wise Kwai's rating: 3/5

Yuthlert Sippapak is one of the Thai film industry's more distinctive and prolific directors. His signature move is to throw all kinds of ideas into the blender and then somehow assemble them as mostly coherent films that I have more or less enjoyed over the years.

After a bit of a hiatus, he's back at it with Buppha Arigato (บุปผาอาริกาโตะ, a.k.a. Buppha Rahtree: A Haunting in Japan).

Not only does it blend the horror, comedy and romantic-drama genres, it's also an Asian cultural mix, with a blood-and-slapstick story about a Thai musician and a film crew visiting a winter resort in Japan, where they are haunted by Japanese-style ghosts as well as the ghost of a spurned young Thai woman. I also couldn't help but feel a bit of John Carpenter vibe, with perhaps a nod to Halloween.

Additionally, it is trading on a combination of well-known Thai movies, tying in with Yuthlert's own Buppha Rahtree franchise of ghost comedy-horrors and the hit 2003 film Fan Chan (แฟนฉัน, a.k.a. My Girl). The bulk of the cast are the boys from Fan Chan, all grown up, including that film's lead actor Charlie Potjes along with the schoolyard bully, Chalermpon "Jack" Thikampornteerawong. It's the first time all the guys have been reunited onscreen since they were children.

The story follows the familiar template of the Buppha Rahtree films, which dealt with the ghost of a vengeful heartbroken young woman haunting an apartment building, and mined comedy from the colorful procession of police, priests and shamans who are recruited to perform exorcisms.

Buppha Arigato changes things up by having the action take place in a rental lodge at a picturesque Japanese ski resort. And instead of one ghost, there are several. The most lethal is a knife-wielding mother and her creepy little boy, spirits of a family who stayed in the house years before but could not pay their rent.

Meanwhile, there's a young Thai woman named Buppha who comes to the resort on a solo trip to mend her broken heart. Seems she caught her boyfriend having sex with another woman. Somehow, she has passed away but her soul is hanging on at the lodge, and is drawn to Charlie and his crew because Charlie looks a bit like her cheating ex.

The lodge's shady landlord, a Thai expat portrayed by "Tar" Navin Yavapolkul, is aware of his property's status as a haunted house, and he has various clergymen brought in to get rid of the bad spirits. Among the bumbling exorcists is a Thai Buddhist monk who is hung over after having too much beer and a sake bomb the night before. His saffron robe is accessorized by expensive sunglasses and a designer handbag, reflecting an actual controversy about a jet-setting monk in Thai religious society. Later, a Thai Hindu priest takes a crack at the spirits. Neither are successful at much except getting plenty of laughs.

So it's up to Charlie, Jack and the rest of the gang to solve the mystery of why the ghosts are haunting the place.

It's a chance for the former child actor Charlie to stretch his dramatic chops, and to show his talent as an indie singer-songwriter. He gets an extended scene during the closing credits, with a stylishly shot close up of just him, his tenor voice and acoustic guitar.

Jack, now a ubiquitous TV personality and commercial pitchman, gets to play director, heading up the film unit that is comprised of other four other now-grown child actors from Fan Chan, namely Yok Teeranitayatarn, Aphichan Chaleumchainuwong, Thana Wityasuranan, Triwarat Chutiwatkhachorachai.

There is a passing of the torch, with former Buppha Ratree actress "Ploy" Chermarn Boonyasak putting in a cameo in a limbo dream sequence, and offering guidance to new-face actress Supassara Thanachat, who takes over the role.

But the real hero of Buppha Arigato is of course Yuthlert's long-time collaborator, actor and veteran film-industry hand Adirek "Uncle" Watleela, again playing a police officer as he has throughout the franchise, and in other films. Here, he's a Japanese cop, but helpfully speaks Thai, and he comes up with an unusual way of defeating the ghosts, involving the use of an umbrella and the Thai military's infamous divining-rod-like GT-200 "bomb detector".

Also, all the guys are required to strip down to their tighty-whitie underwear briefs, so at least these young emperors have a shred of dignity.

It's holiday time in Thailand, with today's Chakri Memorial Day kicking off anticipatory celebrations of next week's Songkran Thai New Year, which is a three-day public holiday from next Wednesday to Friday.

In the cinemas, the big Thai tentpole is the Songkran-flavored Luang Phee Jazz 4G (หลวงพี่แจ๊ส 4G, a.k.a. Joking Jazz 4G). It's about a bespectacled, gauge-eared, tattooed hipster with a checkered past who is hiding out as a monk at an isolated mountaintop temple. He's played by hipster comedian Phadung “Jazz Chuanchuen” Songsang. He and his temple-boy friends have an adventure as they are sent to Bangkok on a mission during Songkran.

Directed by Poj Arnon, Luang Pee Jazz 4G is the first release under the prolific producer-director's rebooted Film Guru production marque, which has been relaunched in a new partnership with Major Cineplex, the Kingdom's biggest movie-theater chain.

Poj and Film Guru were formerly associated with Phranakorn Film, a film studio owned by the Thana Cineplex chain of upcountry cinemas. Phranakorn released a string of hit country comedies in the early 2000s, including the original Luang Phee (Holy Man) movie in 2005.

Originated by comedian, actor and director Note Chernyim, the first Luang Phee Teng starred ubiquitous comedian and TV host Pongsak "Theng Terdterng" Pongsuwan as a former street hood who has entered the monkhood and ministers to colorful residents in a provincial town

 Other Luang Phee Teng installments followed in 2008 and 2010, with rapper Joey Boy and actor-musician Krissada Sukosol Clapp taking respective turns as the saffron-clad lead character. As each movie stands alone, with different characters in the lead, they aren't really sequels but are part of a franchise all the same.

The Nation had more on this latest Luang Phee movie, which is the fourth in the series.




Still hanging around after being released a week ago is the anthology horror 11 12 13 Rak Kan Ja Tai (11 12 13 รักกันจะตาย a.k.a. Ghost Is All Around).

Directed by Saravuth Wichiansarn (Ghost Game), it is released by M-Thirtynine, another film-production company that is partnered with Major Cineplex.

The stories will sound familiar if you watch a lot of these Thai horror anthologies – one about a guy haunted by the spirit of his suicidal girlfriend and another about goofball pals haunted by a friend who is dead but doesn't know it. A third story follows a woman who is in for terror in her travels with her gay chum. Heartthrob actor "Weir" Sukollawat Kanarot is among the stars.

As detailed over on my other blog, other movies in Thai cinemas include the Documentary Club release of All Things Must Pass: The Rise and Fall of Tower Records, which came out last week. This week's offerings include The Huntsman: Winter's War and the South Korean adventure drama The Himalayas, which is presented in the 270-degree True Cinema X at the EmQuartier mall in Bangkok.

Booths at Filmart. Photo by Keith Barclay.

Keith Barclay is editor of the New Zealand film industry publication Screenz. A sponsored journalist covering Filmart, he offers Wise Kwai's Thai Film Journal tailored coverage of Filmart, the Hong Kong-Asia Film Financing Forum and the Asian Film Awards.

Hong Kong's Filmart wrapped on March 17. With 800 exhibitors and 7,300 registered buyers, the event set a new attendance record on the occasion of its 20th edition. It's a long way from the 75 invited exhibitors who took part in the inaugural 1997 event. Filmart is Asia's largest entertainment market event by some distance. Depending how it's measured, it's one of the world's top three or top five.

Strongly supported over the years by Hong Kong's own production and distribution community, a solid core of Thai distributors has been doing business there for several years. There are also several distributors from elsewhere carrying Thai product as part of a broader offer.

The most prominent Thai distributors at this year's Filmart were Five Star and Mono, each carrying a catalog of the more commercial Thai fare – mostly horrors, comedies and romantic comedies. Mono presented a large amount of its TV product as part of its offer. Both stands were busy during the market.

Five Star had Achira Nokthet's Ghost Ship (มอญซ่อนผี, Mon Son Phee) and Surussavadi Chuarchart's F.Hilaire (ฟ.ฮีแลร์), both released in Thai cinemas last year. Also in Five Star's catalogue, although a little older, was Issara Nadee's 2012 feature 407 Dark Flight. Thailand's first 3D horror feature, it has other Hong Kong connections having been shot by another of Filmart's regular exhibitors, Percy Fung's Hong Kong-based 3D Magic.

Representing the Thai government, the Thailand Film Office was one of a number of film offices from the region looking to attract business, productions looking to shoot in Asian locations or use services in the region. This year, the Thai team had a number of bites at the cherry with two umbrella organisations specializing in film attraction also exhibiting. AFCNet, the Asian organisation formed out of the worldwide International Association of Film Commissioners (AFCI) had a stand, as did Film Asean which, as it says on the box, represents the interests of the 10 member countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. Film Asean arrived in Hong Kong having made a good splash at its launch at the Berlinale's European Film Market in February.

The organization has been in development for four years, and has set both outward and inward-facing goals. In Southeast Asia, Film Asean will offer services including a touring mini-festival to introduce films from other countries in the region to regional audiences. For industry members, it will also support training and upskilling initiatives to help develop each country's own production capability and to better service the (usually more lucrative) inbound productions.

In 2013 Thailand introduced its own initiative to increase awareness of the country's potential and attract more inbound production. In the face of improving incentive schemes offered by other countries' governments, the Thailand International Film Destination Festival focused on promoting international titles shot in Thailand. Over the years, many of those titles have used Thailand to double for another part of Asia – most frequently Vietnam for a spate of Hollywood war films from Casualties of War to The Deer Hunter.

More recent high-profile titles such as The Hangover and Xu Zheng's Lost in Thailand might help drive awareness of what Thailand has to offer but, as neighbor Malaysia has discovered at the Pinewood Iskandar studios, it's not all about the blockbusters. Often the longer-running, lower-profile international titles – especially TV shows – keep people working week in and week out and create better opportunities for developing crew members' skills.

As well as distributors selling product at Filmart, production service companies also promote their services. Thai post-production and visual-effects specialists Yggdrazil and Kantana were both present. While Yggdrazil is probably better known internationally for its work in advertising, Kantana has been well-known in Hong Kong for several years, not least for its work on Wong Kar-Wai's Cannes-premiered 2046.

Other Thai post houses also present in Hong Kong were G2D (the former Technicolor facility in Bangkok) and White Light, which presented prizes at the Hong Kong-Asia Film Financing Forum, which ran alongside Filmart. Sway director Rooth Tang's March April May was among the projects selected for this year's HAF.

Both events form part of the umbrella Hong Kong Entertainment Expo, which draws to a close this weekend with the presentation of the Hong Kong Film Awards and the end of the Hong Kong International Film Festival.

Thai titles playing in this year's HKIFF were Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Cemetery of Splendour, well-travelled since its Cannes premiere 10 months ago, and The Island Funeral by Pimpaka Towira, which won the Best Asian Future Film Award at last year's Tokyo International Film Festival.

Both directors' previous features, Apichatpong's Palme d'Or winner Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives and Pimpaka's One Night Husband respectively, also played in past editions of the Hong Kong fest.

Filmart (14 – 17 March) ran as part of the Hong Kong Entertainment Expo, along with film financing forum/project market HAF (14 – 16 March), and the Hong Kong International Film Festival (21 March – 4 April).

The year in Thai cinema commences with Awasarn Loke Suay (อวสานโลกสวย), a teen-oriented psychological drama from Kantana Motion Pictures.

Apinya Sakuljaroensuk stars as a faded Internet idol who becomes upset at being unseated by a new schoolgirl star (Napasasi Surawan). She decides to teach the naive upstart a lesson in cruelty. Pun Homcheun and Onusa Donsawai direct, adapting a short film of the same name.

In a gimmick to gin up publicity, there are two versions – rated 18+ and the “uncut” 20-






And there's another Thai film to start 2016 – veteran actor-director Bin Banluerit's horror-comedy
Krasue Kreung Khon (กระสือครึ่งคน) – which has a jungle tribe of dwarfs being terrorized by the notorious krasue, the female ghost of Southeast Asian folklore that’s a floating vampiric head and entrails. It's a mainstream release, from Sahamongkol.



New releases in Thai cinemas this week include the Oscar-nominated 45 Years from upstart indie distributor HAL Film, which made its debut last year with the release of the offbeat foreign indies White God and The Tribe. And, oddly, the Documentary Club is releasing a dramatic feature, that iPhone movie", Tangerine. Shows the possibilities for doc filmmaking, I suppose.

Upcoming events to mention include the Bangkok Art and Culture Center's Cinema Diverse: Directors' Choice series, which wraps up on February 6 with a screening of the Chilean drama No hosted by Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Thailand's most-celebrated filmmaker. He and film critic Kong Rithdee will talk about the movie afterward, with translation in English. Registration opens at 4.30pm with seating on a first-come, first-served basis.

Still more events this year include the Goethe-Institut and Thai Film Archive's Wim Wenders Retrospective, which will include Wings of Desire outdoors at Lumpini Park in February and a 3D screening of Pina at the Archive in March. There's also the Salaya International Documentary Film Festival in March, the Archive's travelling Memories fest in April, the Silent Film Festival of Thailand in June and the Thai Short Film and Video Festival in August.

• Directed by Joko Anwar
• Starring Salvita Decorte, Nathan Hartono, Bront Palarae, Aimee Saras, Tara Basro, Ario Bayu, Arifin Putra, Reza Rahadian, Adinia Wirasti
• Series premiere November 29, 2015 on HBO Asia. Season 1 finale January 10, 2016

Southeast Asia's monster mythology and ancient spiritual beliefs are vividly drawn upon in the HBO Asia Original Production Halfworlds, which began airing its first season on HBO in Asia last month.

With all eight half-hour episodes directed by Indonesia’s leading filmmaker Joko Anwar, Halfworlds is set in the shadowy back alleys of Jakarta, where there exists a parallel world of ancient blade-wielding tattooed demons. Known as demits, they pose as humans, live alongside us and feed on our blood. Just as our own world appears on the brink of uncertainty, the realm of the demits is also at a crossroads, with a supernatural event known as “the Gift” fast approaching, and causing much anxiety.

It’s the most ambitious production for Singapore-based HBO Asia and its partner studio facilities just across the Strait, on Indonesia’s Batam Island. There, in a complex of soundstages carved out of a malarial mangrove, is where they made the adventure movie Dead Mine in 2012, the Australian-co-produced series Serangoon Road in 2012 and last year’s supernatural family drama Grace.

Halfworlds is their best yet, judging from the first two episodes HBO Asia provided for reviews.

And that’s thanks to Anwar, who co-wrote the series with Collin Chang. The director of a cult-hit, critically acclaimed string of film-noir-inspired thrillers, such as Dead Time: Kala (2007) and The Forbidden Door (2009), Anwar has an uncanny knack for combining moody lighting, highly saturated colors, comic-book-style framing and richly imagined characters in compelling ways.


At the center of the story is a young street artist named Sarah (newcomer Salvita Decorte). Like young Bruce Wayne in the Batman comics, Sarah’s destiny started when her parents were murdered. Unlike Wayne, Sarah is not rich. She has no butler nor a mansion. She squats in a flat but has a wealth of friends, including her tattoo-artist best pal Pinung (Aimee Saras) and young indie rocker boyfriend Coki (Nathan Hartono). They gather in a watering hole known as The Moth.

Sarah has been understandably haunted by her parents’ deaths, as reflected by the disturbing and graphic images that are alongside the tourist sketches in her portfolio. Like any other crime procedural, she has a “murder wall” of her drawings. Among the monsters she’s illustrated is the palasik, a female demon consisting of a floating head and entrails, similar to a well-known Thai ghoul, the krasue. There are also various figures lurking in the shadows, keeping an eye on Sarah, who they believe to be the “chosen one”, and this gives her a feeling of unease.

It’s those darker figures who make Halfworlds utterly watchable, and it helps that HBO Asia has tapped into Indonesia’s most-trusted film export, the smash-hit martial-arts franchise The Raid, to help complete that world. Among them are The Raid 2 alums Arifin Putra as a mysteriously handsome fellow in a hood who is dogging Sarah, and Alex Abbad as another troublemaking demit figure.

Other characters include veteran Malaysian actor Bronte Paralae as Detective Gusti, a weary lawman who has made the demits his personal beat. His intentions are unclear, as he appears to be under the thumb of demit head honcho Juragan (Anwar film vet Ario Bayu). There’s a killer female demon (Adinia Wirasti) with a cool bloody scene every episode. And Reza Rahadian and Tara Basro are a colorful demit couple.

Rahadian in particular has a stand-out sequence when he and his ladyfriend find a victim in a bar. He puts their mark at ease by posing as a nerd, with shaky voice, glasses, a turtleneck and scruffy beard to complete the look. As he lets the other guy steal his woman, Rahadian slowly sheds his quietly unassuming persona and plunges his blade into the guy. Soon, shots of blood are served up all around.


The action is among the highlights, even though it’s not on the scale of The Raid (after all, this is HBO Asia, not Game of Thrones). Among the stand-out scenes is a guy getting sliced in half. And there’s a cool fight in a men’s room, where the electric hand dryer blows a demon’s shirt, revealing his family tattoo. A knock-down-drag-out results in smashed bathroom fixtures and a load of red painting the walls.

Further eye candy is provided by a graphic-novel opening sequence, which is different each episode and furthers illustrates the mythical world of the demits.

While Halfworlds is a cult hit waiting to happen, just how this HBO Asia series will translate in other territories is unclear. Director Anwar offers one view, with a funny scene of a foreigner hipster getting a tattoo in Pinung’s parlor. Seems he made unwanted advances on the pretty tattoo artist and she decided to teach him a lesson in Bahasa Indonesia.

“I can’t wait to show my friends back home,” he says as he checks out the newly inked script between his shoulderblades.

“Nasi goreng,” the tattoo reads. “Fried rice,” reads the subtitle.


See also:

• No half measures [The Nation]

(Cross-published in The Nation)

Above It All (ນ້ອຍ) – It's the story of two people named Noy who want the freedom to love the way they want to love, not the way society says they should love. One is a gay medical student who has yet to come out of the closet to his parents and the girlfriend from a wealthy family they want him to marry. The other Noy is a Hmong college student who wants to buck eons-old tribal traditions and marry someone of her own choosing, not some stranger her father has found.

Outside of Laos, it'll be hard to explain why Above It All is so gosh-darned groundbreaking. But it is the first Lao feature film to specifically address homosexuality. The Hmong angle is interesting as well. I'm just not sure the two taboo love stories work together, as one might cancel out the potential audience for the other.

Much anticipated in certain circles, Above It All is the sophomore feature from Anysay Keola of the Lao New Wave Cinema collective, who debuted in 2012 with the astonishing thriller At the Horizon. It's best to keep your expectations in check. With Above It All, Anysay seems to have made a conscious stylistic choice to make his movie just like the Lao PDR's public-service and propaganda videos. The performances are old-fashionedly wooden and emotionally flat. The pacing is frustratingly slow. At one point during the film's world premiere as the official opener of the sixth Luang Prabang Film Festival, I could sense the audience's impatience, and folks were murmuring, "go on, kid, tell your dad you're gay." Then, a beat too late, Noy says it, "Dad, I like men." And everyone cheered. I think Lao people are ready for more of these types of films.

The lady Noy, meanwhile, has struck up a friendship with a young man in Vientiane, where she has been working as a waitress to put herself through college. In a way-too-cute coincidence, her man Sack happens to be the other Noy's rock-musician younger brother, the guy who has been a huge disappointment to his father. If only dad knew Sack's brother Noy was gay.

As she's ready to graduate from college, Noy's parents show up, and her father insists that she marry a Hmong gentleman in the U.S., whom she has never met. This is apparently a thing now among the Hmong people in Laos, in which Hmong daughters are being married off to, say, Hmong dentists in Minnesota, to support the impoverished family back home.

Above It All has its moments when it approaches the intensity of At the Horizon. Lady Noy gets to tell off a snotty restaurant customer who is badmouthing Hmong women. She receives backing from Sack. A surreal car-wreck serves to further bind the two stories together, and make the Dr. Noy a hero, possibly redeeming himself in his stubborn father's eyes. (3/5)


The Search for Weng Weng – Wearing an actual pith helmet like he's on an archaeological dig, cult-video purveyor/filmmaker Andrew Leavold descends into the heart of darkness in his obsessive quest to untangle the shrouds of myth from bleak reality in The Search for Weng Weng.

The 2013 documentary is another essential chapter from the 1970s and '80s era of exploitation filmmaking in the Philippines. It was a time the Filipino people would rather forget, so it's been left to foreigner genre-film fans to fill in the blanks. Previously, the scene was overviewed in Mark Hartley's informative and entertaining 2010 documentary Machete Maidens Unleashed!, which has since led to Not Quite Hollywood, covering Ozploitation, and the more recent Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films.

In Weng Weng, the Australian Leavold goes to the Philippines to track down clues about one of his obsessions – a 2-foot-9-inch movie star known as Weng Weng. Very nearly forgotten if not for Leavold, Weng Weng was a novelty bit player who was elevated to the level of action star in a string of early '80s spaghetti-and-hotdog westerns and Bond-movie spoofs such as D'Wild Wild Weng, Agent 00 and For Y'ur Height Only.

With the help of old-timer actors, directors, film editors and other friendly characters like "Rene the Legman", Leavold circles ever closer to the depressing truth about Weng Weng, whose tiny, childlike figure was the source of much mirth for movie-goers for just a blip in time. As a public figure, the diminutive Weng Weng (real name Ernesto de la Cruz) was built up into a larger-than-life figure. Trained in martial arts as a child, he was not only a movie star, but also a playboy with multiple girlfriends as well as a secret agent for the Marcos regime. In truth, he was a graceful martial artist, but lived a sad, lonely existence under the control of opportunistic husband-and-wife movie producers, who "adopted" Ernesto and saw him as a yardstick-sized cash cow rather than a human being.

It's full of bizarre revelations, but none are more surreal than when the documentary is hijacked by none other than the Philippines' former first lady Imelda Marcos, who draws Leavold and his band of cult-movie geeks into her rich pageant of self-aggrandizement.

Running just over 90 minutes, The Search for Weng Weng has a running time that belies the epic story of its making, which took eight years and cost Leavold mortages on his Brisbane video shop and brought him to kickstart the Kickstarter era in self-funded indie filmmaking. Such dedication definitely makes Weng Weng a doc you should order. (5/5)


Other films I've caught so far at the Luang Prabang Film Festival include Lao TV star Jear Pacific's latest hilarious horror-comedy-romance Huk Ey Ly 2 (Really Love 2). It had the audience in stitches with its Thai-TV-style slapstick. Judging from crowd response alone, it should be the winner of the festival's new audience award. But will the cheers of the Lao movie-goers translate to the clicks on a tablet screen that are supposed to be made as viewers pour out of the venue?

I was also happy to finally see the Thai country comedy Phoobao Thai Baan Isaan Indy (ผู้บ่าวไทบ้าน อีสานอินดี้), which was released in Thai cinemas last year. Made in the Northeastern Thai province of Khon Kaen, PBTB is a representative of a regional cinema movement of Isaan films that could easily be exported to Laos, to play in the new Platinum multiplex in Vientiane.

• Written and directed by Wisit Sasanatieng
• Starring Jannine Wiegel, Phongsakon Tosuwan, Sa-ad Piampongsan
• Released in Thai cinemas on December 3, 2015; rated 15+
• Wise Kwai's rating: 4/5

After a five-year hiatus from commercial filmmaking, Wisit Sasanatieng has been coaxed back to the director's chair by the studio M-Thirtynine with Runpee (รุ่นพี่, a.k.a. Senior), an artfully directed ghost comedy that successfully merges old-fashioned horror thrills with contemporary teen romance.

Penned by Wisit, the story is about an outcast weirdo at a Catholic girls' boarding school. She has a special nose. Unlike the kid in The Sixth Sense, the olfactorily gifted girl Mon (Ploychompoo Jannine Weigel) can't see dead people, she smells them. More specifically, she can sniff out the troubled spirits who are still lurking in our realm.

Her unique talent leads her to develop a connection with a boy ghost (Bom Phongsakon Tosuwan) who was a student when the place was a business school in the 1980s, before it was a church convent. Together, they investigate a murder that occurred there some 50 years before, when the school was the palace home of a princess, who was found beaten, bloodied and very much dead in her swimming pool. Her gardener took the fall for the death, but there was more to the case than met the eye.

It's an old-timey Thai setting right out of Wisit's 2000 debut feature, Fah Talai Jone (Tears of the Black Tiger), and that western's trademark raspberry-jelly blood splatter is evident in key scenes. Runpee also has echoes of Wisit's 2006 Gothic horror Pen Choo Kub Pee (The Unseeable), plus the wry observational humour of his satiric Mah Nakorn (Citizen Dog).

With false scares and other cinematic sleight-of-hand tricks, Wisit keeps the audience guessing as he suspensefully strings along the story of Mon and her ghost friend Runpee, whose name means simply "senior".

Mon's abilities to sense ghosts has made her an outcast among her school's other girls. Everyone already thought she was a bit weird, but since Runpee came on the scene, she's especially bizarre, since she's given to carrying on conversations with her ghost pal, who almost no one except the audience can see. So it appears she's walking along, talking to herself. There are even street scenes, which I'm not certain were filmed on a closed set, in which passersby naturally react with perplexity to the odd girl who is flailing her arms and talking gibberish to an invisible friend.


At one point, Mon is talking and flailing during her French lessons, and the stern nun teacher punishes Mon by having her wear a sign and stand with her arms outstretched. Even then, she continues her conversation with Runpee.

The laws of physics are different in the ghost world, Runpee explains as they sleuth around the school property, searching for clues to the 50-year-old murder. For example, ghosts can't walk walls if the walls were built after they died. Industrial-like animated diagrams help illustrate. And, there are exceptions, of course. It's not quite Christopher Nolan's Interstellar, but then thank goodness it isn't.

Aside from the main story of the old murder case, there are other issues to pad out the tale and give weight to the characters. There's an annoyingly cheerful young doctor friend of Mon's (DJ We Raweeroj) whom Mon strings along long enough for him to be helpful to the murder case. Another subplot has Mon developing a selfie-fueled friendship with the school's other outcast, Ant (Kaykai Nutticha Namwong), who is shunned by the popular clique because she's been seen getting close to the male chemistry teacher – way too close in fact. He's a jerk, and gets what's coming to him in a vividly memorable scene that has him haunted by millions of eyeball-like CGI spirits.

Ant's story has parallels to the 50-year-old murder, which is intertwined with the school's history and the mysterious figure of "Baby Daeng", the heir to the princess' estate and the cause of conflict. What happened to Baby Daeng? That's the question that keeps coming back to haunt Mon and Runpee as they circle ever closer to a truth that was right in front of their eyes to begin with.

Figures from the past include an elderly doctor, portrayed by stage and screen veteran Sa-ad Piampongsan, who is a hoot to watch as he chews up scenes that grow meatier and meatier with each appearance.

Onward and upward, the action reaches its heights with Mon atop a bell tower, rescued by her personal Jesus Runpee.

It's a mix of actors from a bygone era of classic Thai genre films and fresh-faced youngsters making their debuts, which is something of a trademark for Wisit, who has a knack for plucking up fresh talents and dropping them in as the leads of his films.

Here, singer-actress Ploychompoo is an endearing heroine, rebellious and strong, placing her in good company with another superpowered young actress, Punpun Sutatta Udomsilp from another Thai movie this year, May Nai (May Who?), about a high-school girl who releases a strong electrical charge if her heart gets racing. Maybe one day Mon and May could team up to solve more crimes.


See also:

• Spirits and the soul [The Nation]

Related posts:

• In Thai cinemas: Keetarajanipon, Khun Thong Daeng, Runpee

It's Halloween weekend, so studios, distributors and theater chains have all conspired to cram horror films down our throats whether we want them or not.

Along with a mixed bag of tricks that includes Scouts Guide to the Apocalypse, the nu-horror Regression and yet another Ju-on movie, there's a couple of Thai films.

Among the local offerings is Mon Son Phee (มอญซ่อนผี, a.k.a. Ghost Ship), which has venerable Thai studio Five Star Production getting back into the water.

Set aboard a cargo ship, the story plays on that ancient nautical notion that women are bad luck at sea, and the superstitious crew have much to fear when they find the corpse of the captain's wife boxed up in the hold. Spooky stuff starts happening as the boat heads into a storm.

It's the feature debut by Achira Nokthet, who previously served as an art director on Tanwarin Sukkhapisit's It Gets Better and the horror-comedy films of Poj Arnon (he even helmed a segment of Poj's Tai Hong Tai Hian).

Sean Jindachote stars, along with Phuwadon Wetchawongsa, Akkarin Akaranithimetrath and gay-film cult actor "Fluke" Pongsatorn Sripinta.




The other Thai entry in local cinemas is Love Arumirai, which seems to be taking a page from the recent Amazon series Red Oaks, which had an honest-to-goodness body-swap episode.

The story has to do with the seven-year marriage between Geng (Phisanu Nimsakul) and fashion model Bella (Cheeranat Yusanon) turning stormy. The bickering husband and wife face their toughest test yet when they wake up one morning and get a shock when they go to the mirror.

Seree Phongnithi is the screenwriter on this feature from start-up shingle Munwork Production.



Apart from the spooky offerings, Thailand's new Documentary Club offers a demonstration of counter-programming that is also complementary, bringing in the Oscar-winning 2008 documentary Man on Wire, which is the story behind the death-defying 1974 high-wire stunt by Philippe Petit at New York's World Trade Center. It's a slice of history that has made a comeback thanks to Robert Zemeckis' The Walk, which is a dramatization of Petit and his stunt. But while the phobia-inducing 3D camerawork of The Walk earned accolades, the movie bombed at the box office and was slapped by a backlash from critics, who urged viewers to instead seek out Man on Wire.

That new release and others are covered at the other blog.

Arbat (อาบัติ), a horror thriller centered on a teenage novice Buddhist monk, has been banned by censors, a day before the movie's press premiere.

According to various social-media and news sources, the Culture Ministry's film and media committee banned Arbat for four reasons: it shows the novice drinking alcohol, has scenes of novices fighting, depicts the novice having inappropriate contact with a female, and for a scene of the novice showing disrespect to the Buddha image.

The movie's trailer, released last month, caused a stir with a scene of the young monk touching the face of a girl, prompting Buddhist groups to demand that the film be banned. Thai Buddhist culture strictly prohibits physical contact between monks and females.

The debut feature by young director Kanittha Kwunyoo, Arbat was to be released in cinemas on Thursday, with a press and VIP premiere set Tuesday night.

According to the reports, the movie's studio, Sahamongkol Film International and producer Prachya Pinkaew's Baa-Ram-Ewe company, plan to appeal the decision.

The title Arbat actually means "offense" or "misdemeanor" and refers to acts committed against the Buddhist precepts.

“Viewers will understand the cause and the consequence of everything in the film," director Kanittha had told The Nation in an article last week. "Nothing is there just to stir up controversy. My father told me that if my intention was clear and I could make the film reach the goal I intended, then I should go for it. I haven’t touched on anything I don’t fully understand and I have made the film as a commitฌted Buddhist who still has faith in my religion.”

Starring Charlie Potjes as the central character, Arbat is about a young man who is forced into the monkhood by his father. He takes his vows and dons the monastic robes at a rural temple. Lonely and isolated, he grows close to a local girl in a relationship that would be innocent if the young man weren't a monk. Meanwhile, hidden secrets of the temple and of the young man's own life become revealed.

Also known as Charlie Trairat, the Arbat star is transitioning to more-mature roles after years of working as a child actor in such films as Fan Chan and Dorm.

The controversy over Arbat recalls another Sahamongkol film, Nak Prok (นาคปรก, a.k.a. Shadow of the Naga), which stirred opposition from Buddhist groups over its depiction of criminals dressed as monks brandishing guns and behaving violently. Nak Prok screened at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2008 and was shelved for a couple of years by Sahamongkol.

Nak Prok was eventually released after the adoption of a film-ratings law overseen by the Culture Ministry, which in some ways has more leeway than the old system of blanket censorship administered by the Royal Thai Police, but still has provisions in place for the outright banning of films.

Update: Prachatai has more coverage.

• Directed by MR Chalermchatri Yukol
• Starring Phongsakon Mettarikanon, Sonya Singha, Gandhi Wasuvitchayagit, Arpa Bhivalai, Tonpon Mahaton, Wiri Ladaphan, Chalad Na Songkhla
• Released in Thai cinemas on May 14, 2015; rated 15+
• Wise Kwai's rating: 4/5

Where do zombies come from? Director MR Chalermchatri "Adam" Yukol offers one possible scenario with Phi Ha Ayodhaya (ผีห่าอโยธยา, a.k.a. The Black Death), which mixes zombie-horror gore with the stately pageantry of the Suriyothai and Naresuan historical epics.

The origin dates to 1565, during the reign of Maha Chakkraphat (husband of courageous elephant-battling Queen Suriyothai), when there was a plague in the old royal capital. The tropical malady was blamed on seafaring Portuguese and Persian traders, who sailed with the sickness upriver to the old capital. As far as public-health crises go, it was much worse, and way weirder, than is reported in the history books.

The phenomenon is first encountered on the battlefield, where the clanging of swords place Phi Ha Ayodhaya comfortably within the realm of Thai historical epics like Bang Rajan and the recently completed six-part saga The Legend of King Naresuan.

But then the piles of bodies of the recently slain begin squirming. They crawl to the merely injured and start chowing down. Flesh and sinew are torn apart, and one weary soldier, furtively witnesses it all. Wisely, he gets the heck out of Dodge.

Meanwhile there's more of the traditional set-up for a zombie/slasher/horror flick, with an amorous young couple, their traditional wrap-around garb unwrapped, ambushed during a make-out session along a babbling brook.

In swift order, the main characters are introduced. There's a young star-crossed couple - a nobleman's wilful daughter (played by Sonya Singha) and a bare-chested servant boy (teenybopper magnet Phongsakon "Toei" Mettarikanon). There's also a brothel owner (regular sneering baddie Chalad Na Songkhla), who is in conflict with a fiery hammer-wielding lady blacksmith (Wiri Ladaphan). He also pimps out a mute prostitute (wide-eyed starlet Arpa Bhivalai) who is favoured by a golden-hearted opium addict (Tonpon Mahaton), the husky-framed best pal of the hero.

Folks start stumbling upon chewed-up dead bodies in the jungle and aren't sure what to make of them. Maybe it's a tiger attack. But the temple's abbot suggests it's the plague and villagers start fleeing.

The zombie rules start out a bit vague. How long do the dead stay dead? But eventually the mouldering and munched-upon do wake back up with blank grey eyes and an everlasting hunger for living human flesh. It's a fact of undeath.


With the city overrun by zedheads, it's up to a disparate band of the still-living to hold on and hopefully survive the night. Barricading themselves in the brothel, the core characters are joined by that weary bearded soldier who knows exactly what he's up against. Portrayed by Gandhi Wasuvitchayagit, he's a swift swordsman who doesn't hesitate to lop off zombie heads. It's the only way to kill them. Today we all know that, but this was 450 years ago and nobody had a clue. This warrior was on the cutting edge.

Filmed in Kanchanaburi, on the massive period sets where Adam assisted his father, director MC Chatrichalerm Yukol, on the Naresuan epics, Phi Ha Ayothaya has the feel of a low-budget B-movie, with multi-hyphenate Adam taking credits for the bulk of the chores behind the lens. Though, as noted in the credits, it was still a big deal, creating some 3,000 jobs for extras, film crew, caterers, transport, etc.

The action is a bit off-kilter and comic-book like. For example, the lady blacksmith decides to ditch her swords and use heavy hammers, one in each hand, and bust zombie skulls. She earlier speared a tree with a molten-hot sword.

Meanwhile, the brothel owner has a muscle-bound, bare-chested bodyguard. He trades action-movie banter about duty and honour with the grizzled battlefield veteran, and somehow grabs up a huge cannon, which probably weighs a ton, and actually fires the thing and remains standing. Later he uses it like a baseball bat to swat zombie flies.

There are plenty of zombie-gore effects, but they are mostly confined to tightly framed segments. So there's a close-up of a head being split here and a zombie's forehead bisected there. The better parts are when zombies fill the frame and surround their victims, like ants swarming over a sugar cube.

The sound design contributes greatly to the feeling of dread. There's an aural sense of rubbery skin being stretched and bones snapped, but the overall audio cue is the zombies' terrifying roar, which sounds like a mix of a tiger and the dragons from Game of Thrones.

Adam probably deserves credit for making the first honest-to-goodness Thai zombie movie. Thai cinema has always been about Thai ghosts, of which there are many. Zombies, which are cinematically traced to George Romero's Night of the Living Dead (1968), are a relatively new genre. They've staggered in a couple times before, in Taweewat Wantha's ridiculously fun SARS Wars from 2004 and 2011's Gancore Gud by rapper Joey Boy. But while those films had various forms of shuffling dead-eye ghouls, I'm not sure they actually said they were zombies.

Adam's film does use the Z-word. It crops up in the subtitles whenever someone says phi ha.

Anyway, the plot is definitely inspired by Living Dead, which had bickering characters trapped in a farmhouse. Romero's follow-up, "Dawn of the Dead", was set in a shopping mall, and Edgar Wright's comedy tribute Shaun of the Dead had its heroes hanging out in a pub. Phi Ha Ayodhaya manages to channel those films, and for a moment I thought I heard a Queen song playing on the soundtrack.

The Thai spin on the zombie tale adds a bit of Buddhist spirituality, in which only those who survive let go of their sentimental, mortal attachments to friends, family and other loved ones. For those who linger in the embrace of the dearly departed for too long are surely doomed to be bitten themselves. It's best to chop off those heads before they turn.

(Cross-published in The Nation)



Related posts:

• Zombies to the rescue in Phi Ha Ayodhaya

Might as well admit it: I'm bored by Thai films.

Apart from indie art-house efforts off the festival circuit, short films, documentaries, and the increasingly rare Thai action movie, Thai cinema offers fewer and fewer of the types of compelling genre films that got me interested in Thai films in the first place. Instead, it's been one sentimental romantic melodrama after another, and there's only so much of that I can stomach.

Thankfully, there are still a few directors around who will take risks, and director MR Chalermchatri "Adam" Yukol aims to shake things up with zombies in Phi Ha Ayodhaya (ผีห่าอโยธยา , a.k.a. The Black Death). Distributed by Sahamongkol, it comes out in local cinemas this week, and is being promoted against a big Hollywood tentpole, Mad Max: Fury Road. Hell, I'm going to see them both.

Adam's sophomore feature effort following his 2013 contemporary crime drama The Cop, Phi Ha Ayodhaya was made as his father was wrapping up his Legend of King Naresuan saga. The sixth and final entry in MC Chatrichalerm Yukol's historical-action franchise is still screening in a few cinemas. And yes, this sixth part really is the last, which brings the eight-year-long Naresuan story to a logical conclusion and offers everyone a much-needed sense of closure.

Piggybacking on Naresuan by using that film's massive period sets in Kanchanaburi, Adam's zombie flick is also set hundreds of years ago in the old Siamese realm. It's a weird time, with villagers mysteriously dying off but then coming back to life with a hunger for the living. Monks and black magic, which usually work against traditional Thai ghosts, are of no use.

Fortunately, the ancient zombie fighters have swords at the ready.

Thai horror cinema has generally favored ghosts, but zombies have periodically popped up over the years. Taweewat Wantha's absolutely insane SARS Wars and rapper Joey Boy's Gancore Gud (ก้านคอกัด, a.k.a. Dead Bite) are a couple of worthwhile examples.

Adam, who has a keen eye for classic genre cinema, has said he was inspired by George Romero's Night of the Living Dead, which spawned sequels, remakes and countless imitators.

Hopefully local cinema-goers will give Phi Ha Ayodhaya a chance, and crack the door back open for Thai genre films and break the mainstream industry out of its current cycle of mind-numbingly dull romance flicks. The trailer was enough to get me interested in Thai films again, for the time being.

• Directed by Tanwarin Sukkhapisit
• Starring Somchai Kemklad
• Released in Thai cinemas on January 22, 2015; rated 15+
• Wise Kwai's rating: 2/5

The commercialization of former indie rebel Tanwarin Sukkapisit continues apace with the throw-away horror-comedy Ror Dor Khao Chon Phee Thee Khao Chon Kai (รด.เขาชนผีที่เขาชนไก่).

Produced by that infamous purveyor of cross-dressing schlock, Poj Arnon, and released by Phranakorn Film, audiences can be excused for believing they are seeing yet another movie directed by the prolific Poj. It looks very similar to Poj's recent Mor 6/5 horror comedies, which involve a dozen or so schoolboys in various states of shrieking and shirtlessness.

But no, it's directed by Tanwarin, who co-wrote the script. The story, best as I can make out, has schoolboys in Kanchanaburi's Khao Chon Kai military boot-camp, taking part in Thailand's version of the Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps (JROTC). It's a scheme that gets young men out of having to participate in the drawing for the military draft, but here they have to contend with something far more frightening (to them anyway) – a pair of ghosts.

One of the pale-skinned spirits is portrayed with his usual frightening intensity by veteran leading man Somchai Kemklad. I'm not sure he needed much makeup. He's a terrifying drill instructor who has become even more menacing ever since his run-in a year before with a landmine. The other ghost is a kid, a cadet, who was apparently killed by the dead drill instructor. He always turns up and greets the frightened boys with a quick twitch of his eyebrow.

As with these horror comedies, most of the time is eaten up by the usual headache-inducing running around and screaming, even though the ghosts aren't very scary. The scares, such as they are, are interspersed with a bath-time dance sequence, with the boys doing a K-pop number while wearing just their underwear briefs.


With nearly a dozen schoolboy characters, it's near impossible to pick one as outstanding. All look the same in (and out) of uniform, with the same buzzcut hairstyle. And they act in the same stupid manner with little to distinguish them apart. There's a mean guy, and another guy has a dumb smile. Yet another guy always freezes in place when he encounters a ghost, which actually isn't a bad tactic. There's an interesting trio of comic-relief ladyboy characters, all with the requisite amount of sass, but with a cast already filled with clowns, they aren't really needed and are quickly forgotten.

There are probably serious issues this overwhelmingly homoerotic film could have dealt with, such as how gay guys and transgenders cope with the boot-camp setting. But with all the nonsensical running around and screaming, it's hard to take anything seriously.

Behind-the-scenes photos from the set indicate that Tanwarin likely had a blast playing general to her troupe of young actors in army uniforms. I think they had more fun making the movie than anyone did watching it.

For Tanwarin, Ror Dor represents yet another move deeper into commercial territory after years of making edgy short films. Well respected within the industry, the transgender filmmaker took hard knocks when her highly personal and sexually explicit indie drama Insects in the Backyard was banned from screening in Thailand. She then set out on a purely commercial direction, helming the Issan-dialect country comedy Hak Na Sarakham (produced by Prachya Pinkaew at Sahamongkol) and then turning back to transgender issues and addressing them in a mainstream way with the award-winning drama It Gets Better. Last year, she did two decent features, the cute horror comedy Threesome and the Japanese-Thai romance Fin Sugoi. Tanwarin hooked up with Poj on the producer-director's Die a Violent Death omnibus horrors, directing the better segments, acting in front of the lens and helping with various other aspects of the productions.

Here's hoping Tanwarin is banking the cash earned from these jobs, with an eye toward making another award-winner. That would distinguish her from Poj, who just seems to keep making bad movies and then using the cash from those to make more bad movies.

See also:

• Official trailer from Phranakornfilm
• Duck when a movie's bad [Soopsip, The Nation]

• Directed by Chookiat Sakveerakul
• Starring Focus Jeerakul, Parama Im-anothai, Chonnikarn Natejui, Kittisak Pathommaburana
• Released in Thai cinemas October 30, 2014; rated 15+
• Wise Kwai's rating: 4/5

Chookiat Sakveerakul makes his return to horror with The Eyes Diary (คนเห็นผี, Kon Hen Pee), which blends in elements of romantic drama with the story of a bickering couple whose constant fighting his dire consequences.

Like Chookiat's sophomore feature effort, the thriller 13 Game Sayong (13: Game of Death, remade as 13 Sins), The Eyes Diary is based on a comic book. In this case, it's a Siam Intermedia title by Anek Roikaew. No relation to the Pang brothers' Eye franchise, The Eyes Diary actually feels similar to another Thai horror film, Shutter, including references to a haunted photo and a couple other elements.

But with a fine young cast and a story that slowly builds the tension and scares, The Eyes Diary has plenty to stand on its own.

Parama Im-anothai (It Gets Better) stars as Nott, a college drop-out who works for one of Thailand's rescue squads, those notorious crews of pickup-racing bodysnatchers who retrieve corpses from wrecks and clean up after suicides. He's a somber, brooding fellow who has the macabre habit of keeping souvenirs from the bodies he finds. His latest score is a rubber bracelet off the wrist of a motorbike rider who was ripped in half by a truck and spread like jelly on the highway. His co-worker and closest pal Jon (Kittisak Pathommaburana from Chookiat's Grean Fictions and Home) tries in vain to warn Nott from keeping dead people's stuff, but Nott is stubborn.

Anyway, Nott is haunted by the death of his girlfriend Plaa (Focus Jeerakul), who was killed in a bike wreck as the two were fighting. And her last words, "you'll never see me again", haunt him. He's desperate to find a way to communicate with her on the "other side", hence his predilection for collecting curios from corpses. Eventually, Nott is put in touch with an acquaintance of his old school friends, the young woman Modta (Chonnikarn Natejui), who has also suffered a loss of a loved one but has had some success in getting in touch with them. Also, there's Jon, who seems to have a talent for communicating with the dead.

The scares gradually ramp up. There's all that creepy stuff in John's cabinets, and all the horrifying ghosts, putrefied and gross from their various causes of death.

One thing I appreciated about The Eyes Diary was how it sought to build a universe in which belief in ghosts isn't necessarily taken for granted as it is in other ghost flicks. There's a healthy dose of skepticism among the characters. Perhaps, the biggest non-believer is Nott, who despite all the dead people's junk he collects still can't manage to break through and reach Plaa.

It's a solid cast, but the highlight is the two actresses, borrowed from the GTH stock company. Focus, who made her debut as one of the child stars of Fan Chan in 2003, gives a performance that subtly shifts from sweet and vulnerable to terrifying.

See also:

• The Eyes Diary trailer with English subtitles

ExpatZ, a short film made in Thailand that has been screening and winning awards at fests worldwide, will make its Bangkok premiere next week at the Foreign Correspondents Club of Thailand.

Directed by Jimmie Wing, ExpatZ is a psychedelic horror-comedy mash-up set in the totally fictional country of Wighland, which bears no resemblance at all to Thailand. Nope. Not one bit. Anyway, in this strange land, a foreign TV journalist encounters all sorts of colorful characters as he tracks down a rogue retired American military officer.

Here's more details:

A foreign television reporter specializes in interviewing bizarre foreigners living in Wighland. The reporter and his local partner, Professor Roasted Squid, take off to find an especially peculiar retired American military officer. Ordinarily, the boss of a local hamburger joint, the retired officer hides a secret culinary technology. When a few of the reporter’s jealous "friends" show up on the scene, they get caught up in a long and unexpectedly strange trip. The hilarious antics and cross-cultural relationships of these crazy white people perfectly set the scene for this wild adventure.

In awarding Jimmie Wing's film the grand prize for best short film, the Urban Nomad Film Festival (Taiwan’s largest independent film confab) said, "Adopting a humorous and visually alluring style, EXpatZ describes the strange and twisted stories of Westerners in Asia and the adventures of one Asian people’s turnabout in fortunes. The film is a satire on the ridiculousness of the superiority of white people and lampoons standards of racial stereotyping. Through extreme subversion and sabotage, EXpatZ presents a multi-faceted view of the relative relationship between the West and Asia within the ecology of Southeast Asian colonialism.”

The screening is set for Wednesday, November 19, at the Foreign Correspondents Club of Thailand. The event starts at 6pm with hamburgers, followed by the film at 7pm. Wing will talk and answer questions later, along with co-leads Soontorn Meesri and Lex Luther. Kamonrat Ladseeta, who plays Madame Quoits, the wife of Commander Quoits (Darren Potter), will also field questions.

Check out the trailer, embedded below.

• Directed by Sophon Sakdapisit
• Starring Juthawut Pattarakamphon, Thonphop Lirattanakhachon, Supatsara Thanachart
• Released in Thai cinemas on August 7, 2014; rated 18+
• Wise Kwai's rating: 4/5

The title characters in The Swimmers (ฝากไว้..ในกายเธอ, Fak Wai Nai Kai Ther) aren't the schoolboys with chiseled six-pack abs. Nope, the real stars of this movie are sperm, tiny swimmers who deposit themselves in a teenage girl and cause much grief for everyone involved.

Sophon Sakdapisit, largely repeating the success he had with 2011's Laddaland, about a dunder-headed dad who moves his family to a supposedly haunted housing development, The Swimmers pulls Speedos over the eyes of young Thai moviegoers. Plugged by studio GTH's slick social-networking machine, the kids think they are going to see a ghost movie. But it's not – it's a taut psychological drama, with the added horror of being a message movie about teen sex. That's similar to what GTH is doing with its TV series Hormones, now in its second season. It has Thai society jabbering about the pros and cons of the show's depictions of schoolkid promiscuity and partying, no doubt contributing to sales of the special GMM Grammy set-top boxes needed to watch the zeitgeisty show.

Anyway, the story of The Swimmers centers on a love triangle that springs from a big-haired boy named Perth (Juthawut Pattarakamphon), one of the top-ranked members of his high school's swim team. He has eyes for Ice (Supatsara Thanachart), the pretty girlfriend of Tan (Thonphop Lirattanakhachon), a taller, rangier and short-haired rival on the team who is also the closest thing Perth has to a best friend.

After a few tender moments, Ice is splattered at the bottom of the school's drained diving pool, setting up the much-touted premise of a guy haunted by the ghost of a suicidal pregnant girl. A nifty sequence has workmen replacing the smashed pool tiles in fast motion, leaving a slightly darker light blue spot where there was once the corpse of a girl.

With guilt over the death weighing on him, Perth slowly comes apart. He starts encountering the girl's ghost. His buddy Tan, grieving and angry, is determined to find out who got his girlfriend pregnant, and he enlists Perth's help.

Sophon keeps viewers off balance with a plot structure that toggles back and forth from the present to the weeks before Ice's deadly drop.

More distractions and character-building for Perth are added when he gets sexually active (and again forgets a condom) with another girl, the promiscuous Mint (The Voice Thailand season two contestant Violette Wautier). With the time jumps, it's sometimes confusing because Ice and Mint are so scarily similar, they are kind of hard to tell apart.

There's also Perth's somewhat dysfunctional home life, with his single mother always working late and then by chance getting involved with the swim team's coach. He advises Perth to eat one raw egg a day, for the protein. The eggs then become another handy metaphor for pregnancy, and make for cool scenes, such as when Perth goes overboard and eats a couple dozen raw eggs in one sitting.

Perth believes he's pregnant, carrying Ice's baby. "Hey Perth, your six-pack is now a one-pack," a teammate shouts at him in the locker room. And, indeed, Perth's belly appears to be swelling in sympathy to his dead pregnant sweetheart.

The soundtrack by prolific film-score composer Chatchai Pongprapaphan throws in plenty of fake jump scares to ratchet up the tension and keep viewers in knots. The scary soundtrack cues worked on the young Thais who packed a suburban Bangkok cinema for a late weeknight show, but had me rolling my eyes and wondering if the movie would still be as scary without such nonsense. Try it sometime. I think it might be scarier.

But there's more that's good than annoying with The Swimmers, such as a fun jump cut from one home pregnancy test to another. It's another way of keeping the audience off kilter.

Also enjoyable is watching Perth's "frenemy" Tan grow increasingly suspicious. Tan turns detective, trying to recover the data on Ice's shattered phone, setting up a race that has Perth trying to stay ahead and erase damaging evidence from the dead girl's Facebook page. It's another example of how the Internet and text messages are being seamlessly integrated into films, and I guess Sophon does it pretty effectively. At another point, Perth fingers another guy as Ice's lover, and in a spooky abandoned half-built hotel, Tan forces Perth into putting the hurt on the boy.

There are a few other distractions. The story is set in Chon Buri, a seaside setting that is lovely yet otherworldly when compared to the Bangkok or Chiang Mai locales that GTH productions tend to favor. It's a weird place, where the kids are still using BlackBerrys, or are moving straight to Windows phones. And they drive Chevys. Strange.

Also, whose corpse is that hanging in the doorway? And, well, there's other confusing developments.

What's clear though is that Perth is a dark, flawed character, a well-worn element of Western films and TV series but something that GTH has tended to shy away from until recently, with such films as Laddaland, last year's hit thriller Countdown and now The Swimmers. No squeaky-clean teens here.

Goosed along by the prospect of boys who wear less clothes than the girls, The Swimmers has been a big draw in Thai cinemas, earning more than 30 million baht (about $1 million) on its opening weekend and appearing to be well on its way to hitting the studio's celebratory benchmark of 100 million baht.

Going dark is a good thing, GTH. Keep it up.

See also:

• The Swimmers Official International Trailer

Thai films are in the spotlight this year at NAFF, the Network of Asian Fantastic Films that's the project market of PiFan, the Puchon International Fantastic Film Festival.

After drumming up response a few months ago, NAFF announced its selections today:

Directors include Kulp Kaljareuk, a rookie helmer and scion of the clan that runs Kantana, the long-established Thai studio that's best known for soap operas and post-production film work. He's making his feature debut this week with the house-of-wax thriller Hong Hoon, starring Ananda Everingham.

There's also Nuttorn Kungwanklai, who took part in the comic-book-like omnibus horror 9-9-81, art director Solarsin Ngoenwichit, short-film director Lertsiri Boonmee, producer Pakinee Chaisana, and, perhaps most notably, director Paul Spurrier and producer Piyawat Dangdej, who are looking to make a feature to follow their cult 2004 thriller P.

Kulp's project is Fallen Thailand, and it'll be produced by Nattaporn Kaljareuk.

Nuttorn's Jam-Nien: The 300 Years Ghost is being produced by veteran indie director Soros Sukhum, along with Donsarn Kovitvanitcha and Cattleya Paosrijaron.

Pakinee, a line producer and unit production manager on such made-in-Thailand Hollywood projects as Only God Forgives, Scorpion King 3 and Stealth, is shopping Love Me Love Me Not with producer Thidarat Pakchanakorn.

Solarsin, whose art department and set decorator credits include The Mark: Redemption and Journey from the Fall, is producing his project, Panang - The Monster Within.

Lertsiri is teaming up with producers Vutichai Wongnophadol and Veerapat Keeratiwuttikul for project called SLR.

And Spurrier and Piywat, whose P screened at the 9th PiFan, are looking to make The Penthouse, "examining social issues haunting Thailand".

Other NAFF projects were previously announced by Film Business Asia. And the full line-up for PiFan, running from July 17 to 27, is yet to come.

A representative of Laos' emergent film industry, director Mattie Do, is on the sidelines of the Cannes Film Festival, schmoozing her way around town as she hunts for cash to make a movie.

Taking part in La Fabrique Les Cinemas du Monde, a market event and masterclass for first- and second-time feature directors, she landed a deal with crowdfunding website IndieGoGo.com in partnership with the gorehounds who run TwitchFilm.com. Her campaign video is on Vimeo, but I can't get the embed link to work.

Mattie needs cash to buy buckets of blood from her local fresh market in Vientiane, as well as other supplies, to make her sophomore feature, Dearest Sister (Nong Hak). It's about a poor country girl who comes to the city to help her rich cousin, a blind girl who gets lottery numbers from the dead.

Produced by Douangmany Soliphanh and Lao Art Media, Dearest Sister is also supported by Lao Brewing Company, which explains why Mattie has been flogging Beerlao Gold up and down the Croisette in Cannes.

Her film is the follow-up to Chanthaly, a slow-burn ghost thriller that made history for being the first Lao horror movie and the first Lao feature directed by a woman. After premiering at 2012's Luang Prabang Film Festival, it went on to screen at the Fantastic Fest in Austin, Texas, becoming the first Lao film to screen anywhere outside of Southeast Asia.

For fans who support the IndieGoGo campaign, Mattie has an array of amusing premiums to offer. For example, for $10, she'll personally buy you a Lao lottery ticket. If you win, she'll send you a stack of kip – Lao currency that is absolutely worthless outside of Laos. And if you lose, you can join the production's Instagram and follow the progress there. For $100, you get a confiscated bootleg DVD of Chanthaly - Mattie will personally lick the stamps to mail it you. If you give $1,000, you can work as a production assistant, and wrangle those buckets of blood. Contributors of $5,000 can act in the film - "be a skeevy sex tourist" - you'll have to pay your own way to Bangkok, however.

Keep track of the production by "liking" the film's Facebook page.

(Cross-published in The Nation)

• Directed by Poj Arnon
• Starring Wanida Termthanporn, Pongpit Preechaborisutkun
• Released in Thai cinemas on April 10, 2014; rated G
• Wise Kwai's rating: 2/5

Since the legend of Mae Nak Phra Khanong originated more than a century ago, storytellers, playwrights and filmmakers have all sought to put their own spin on the tale of the ghost wife Nak, who died in childbirth while her husband was away at war. But her love was so strong, her spirit remained, and when Mak returned, his love was so strong, he was blind to the fact that his wife was no longer alive.

Now comes Thailand's reigning cinematic snakeoil salesman, Poj Arnon. A shameless opportunist who's never one to shy away from making a film that's ripped from today's headlines, his latest zeitgeist-capturing effort is Mor 6/5 Pak Ma Tha Mae Nak (มอ 6/5 ปากหมาท้าแม่นาค, a.k.a. Mathayom pak ma tha Mae Nak). It blends last year's blockbuster Thai movie Pee Mak – the record-shattering box-office hit – with his own 2013 horror-comedy, Mor 6/5 Pak Ma Tha Pee (Make Me Shudder!), in which bratty schoolboys ran and screamed as they were chased by ghost teachers.

While GTH's Pee Mak added four of Mak's bumbling war buddies to the Mae Nak Phra Khanong story, Poj ups the ante by adding 10 foul-mouthed shrieking schoolboys in short pants.

Taking a cue from another of last year's hit movies, the indie teen drama Tang Wong, the Mathayom 6/5 fellows pray to the Mae Nak shrine for good luck on their school exams. But, being complete idiots, they insult the shrine and find themselves pulled back in time to Mae Nak's day.

They then hamfistedly attempt to assist in Mae Nak's giving birth, but of course botch things up.

Later, Nak and her baby Dang appear to be just fine, and apparently alive. She tasks the boys with going to the battlefield to track down Mak and tell him the good news.

Of course, the lads all have to don period clothing, so off come the shirts, out come outlandish "historic" hairstyles and, for good measure, their teeth are blackened in keeping with the fashion of the era.

A short action scene later, the boys have returned with Mak (Pongpit Preechaborisutkun), but something's off. It appears Nak is dead after all. Torch- and pitchfork-wielding villagers band together against the ghost while the boys attempt to gently clue Mak in while also not upsetting Nak.

The story then follows the usual lines of the Mae Nak story as well as the usual Thai horror-comedy rhythms of nonsensical, headache-inducing running around and screaming.

Poj sets up plenty of opportunities for the boys to get close together, grabbing onto each other out of fear. Several scenes are devoted to the shirtless, loincloth clad young men sleeping, arranged with one boy's head making a pillow out of another lad's groin, much to the audience's delight.

Singer-actress Wanida "Gybzy Girly Berry" Termthanaporn joins the pantheon of Thai actresses to take on the role of Nak. Unfortunately, she isn't given much to do, other than look fierce, and I'm not sure she pulls it off. It seems she is upstaged by hair, makeup, costume and cheesy special effects, including a rubbery-looking arm stretch (hey, about a Stretch Armstrong-style Mae Nak action figure?)

As with the first Mor 6/5, the movie was filmed in 3D – the second to come from studio Phranakorn. But I didn't see it in 3D – Thai 3D releases are quickly supplanted in local cinemas by Hollywood 3D action movies and animation, so if you don't see them in 3D in the first week or so, you'll likely miss out. But I don't feel I missed a thing. If anything, the 3D would have just given me a bigger headache.

Mor 6/5 Pak Ma Tha Mae Nak has persisted in hanging around in cinemas after nearly a month, earning around 30 million baht, according to the latest published account. It's not near the record-setting levels of Pee Mak, but it's probably enough that Poj and Phranakorn will do another sequel, just as long as the boys look good in short pants and school uniforms.

See also:

• Official trailer