Thailand: Bangkok Haunted (2001)
There are two types of writers. (Okay, there are far more than two, but for the purposes of what we’re about to discuss there are two.) There are iterative writers, those who draft and re-draft and then re-draft again, then there are generative writers, those who do most of the work in their head and then just sit and type. Neither method is the “right” one; it’s just the method that’s right for that particular writer.
I am a generative writer. I plan these reviews in my head as I watch the film, or over the next day or two, then I just sit and write. Sometimes I have the whole review laid out in my mind, other times I know how it starts and I just type it out and some other part of my mind takes over and completes it.
Iterative writers are seen to work a lot. They have notes and papers and drafts. Generative writers don’t seem to be working because much of this is done in our heads. We can’t re-write; if it’s wrong, we have to start again from scratch. We can edit, obviously, and polish the odd sentence, but mostly what you see is what you get. If we don’t nail it in the first draft then it’s never happening.
I mention all of this now because as I was watching Bangkok Haunted I found myself wondering how the hell I was going to review the film.
I hate ranking things. It’s…overly simplistic. You can see from these reviews the kinds of things I like. I can even tell you of the forty-something films I’ve reviewed so far which were my favourites. But can I say Capernaum is a better film than Daratt? No, because they’re different.
I can, however, fully admit that this is going to be my worst review. And probably the shortest, which is why I’m ruminating on my own writing process this much. I don't like to rank, but even I have to admit this is my weakest effort. At least I now have a benchmark.
You see, Bangkok Haunted isn’t very good. It isn’t very bad either. Had it been one or the other I could write a review explaining why it was. But I can’t. I can barely even remember the three stories that made up Bangkok Haunted, and I only saw it last night.
I was scared once. Once. Bangkok Haunted is a horror film. And the thing that scared me was when the first segment had ended and I looked at the running time on my player and realised there was still almost ninety minutes left. That horrified me. The film didn’t.
I went for Bangkok Haunted because the title suggested it was very local, and it also suggested it was scary. Yes, you get to see quite a lot of Thailand, so I can’t fault it for that, but the stories themselves aren’t particularly local. These could have been from an Amicus anthology in the ‘60s. (They’d have been far shorter if they had been.)
The haunted drum story is the first one and is the one that comes closest to being regionally representative. It has some local dancing in it, and a village. It also has a confusing series of flashbacks that don’t really make a lot of sense because it’s not overly clear which are the flashes back and which are the present-day scenes. It’s also not particularly frightening that a drum is cursed. What’s it going to do, wake you up to death? Annoy you? It certainly annoyed me.
The drum story is the best one. The second one is supposed to be erotic but would probably only appeal to Jeffrey Dahmer. It’s about an aphrodisiac made from dead people. Even that sentence makes it sound more intriguing than the film manages. Although we do get to see lots of people vomiting. I don’t like vomit. Not many people do. I don’t want to see copious amounts of it mixed with sex and death. Lucifer Valentine has made a career out of that and they’re some of the most unpleasant films I’ve ever seen.
The film eventually stumbles to a close with a tale about a police investigating an apparent suicide. If I were writing a pithier review I’d probably suggest that she did it because she’d seen the rest of the film.
Normally when I write these pieces I manage to find something interesting to say, even when I wasn’t expecting to. For this one, I’m struggling to find anything to say at all.
It’s not very good. It’s insipid. It’s bland. It’s meh. As the young people say nowadays, it’s mid.
Which is not what you want from a horror film. At least be entertaining. I can forgive most things if I’m amused by them. I can’t forgive tedium.
Disc: DVD (Region 2, UK)
Source: eBay
Availability: Out of print. Rightly so. The USA also had a DVD which is out of print. Various countries in the Far East had DVD editions. Everyone is happy with it being out of print - no one has issued a Blu-ray.