Phobia

Starring: Laila Boonyasak, Pongsatorn Jongwilak

Synopsis:

An anthology of four (slightly) inter-connected horror stories…In “Happiness”, a housebound young woman strikes up a relationship-by-text message with a young man who may not be what he seems. In “Tit-For-Tat”, a bullied schoolboy takes deadly revenge on the gang who’ve tormented him. In “In the Middle”, four guys undertake a whitewater rafting trip they’ll never forget, and in “Last Fright”, an air-stewardess must survive a flight on a plane empty of passengers, save for a corpse.

“Happiness” kicks things off with a story about a young woman with a broken leg, stuck in her apartment with her leg in a cast, being harried by her landlady and awaiting the return of her room-mate. One evening she receives a text message from someone she doesn’t know, and ends up conversing with him through the night. Things are quite cute and buoyant until the boy asks for a photo, and she asks for one in return. When she receives it, she’s puzzled – it’s the same picture that she sent to him. However, to the left of her head is a ghostly image. Her chat-mate soon turns malevolent and some creepy goings on convince her she’s been flirting with a ghost – who’s now on his way to see her. Using little more than the increasingly malevolent tone of her cell-phone and the switching off of streetlights to indicate the ghost’s presence, the story ratchets up the tension until the girl is alone in the dark. What makes the story stand out is the fact that there is no spoken dialogue at all.

“Tit for Tat” is the most bloody of the tales, and doesn’t hold back on the impalings and eye-gougings and taunting demonic apparitions. It’s also the most convoluted of the quartet, and relies on our protagonists (who are actually a bunch of violent delinquents and don’t deserve our sympathy) having knowledge of different types of deadly curses in order to info-dump exposition for the audience. Having said that, it’s quite a fast-paced tale.

“In The Middle” plays for comedy, with four horror-movie obsessed teens camping in the woods, scaring each other with ghost stories at night and white-water rafting during the day. When their raft capsizes, three manage to scramble to the shore, but one remains missing until late that night – and there seems to be something a little off about his behaviour. It’s a pretty funny segment, as they tease each other about the films they haven’t seen. There’s a couple of digs at the Thai Film industry (complaining that they just rip off Hollywood ideas) and asian ghost stories in general (why must they all have pale women with long black hair in front of their face?).

“Last Fright” sees a flight attendant being called in for a special duty. She is to be the stewardess on a special flight taking a princess back to her home country. The Stewardess has been specifically requested by the princess, as she was on-board her honeymoon flight as well. However, we soon learn that there is a more malevolent reason. The princess knows that the stewardess is having an affair with the princess’ husband and plans to torment her for the entire flight. However, a mishap with the princess’s food (she’s allergic to shellfish) ends up killing her, and the stewardess is called upon to escort the body back home. The set-up for this story was excellent, and the second half is pretty scary,

The stories are very loosely connected – if you search carefully there is a reference in each to one of the other stories, and the tone overall resembles a Thai version of the EC Comics (Tales from the Darkside, etc).

Verdict:

A fun anthology – the stories are well-produced and a couple are genuinely scary. I look forward to seeing Phobia 2.

7 out of 10 (MikeOutWest)