Phobia 2 (Ha phraeng) (Directors: Banjong Pisanthanakun, Paween Purikitpanya, Songyos Sugmakanan, Parkpoom Wongpoom ): From Thailand comes this omnibus of 5 short horror tales. I never saw the original Phobia (or 4bia as it was cleverly titled in some places), but the idea of a collection of shorter horror stories appeals to me, mostly because I’m a big fraidy-cat and knowing that we’ll be moving on to a new story every 20 minutes or so makes me less afraid.
That being said, it’s a truism that most anthology films are wildly uneven. So part of the overall surprise of Phobia 2 is not only that it’s fresh and innovative, but that each segment is equally fresh and innovative, with very high production values throughout. As a latecomer to the Thai horror scene, I was very pleasantly surprised, but I needn’t have been. The filmmakers are some of the same people who are behind some very polished and popular horror films (Alone, Shutter, and of course, Phobia). Here is a brief summary of each story:
- Novice: a young man is packed off to a rural monastery after a teenaged prank goes horribly wrong. In the forest, he comes upon a shrine where people have made offerings to the “hungry ghost.” Soon he’ll be pursued by the ghost leading him to a true sense of remorse and a terrible tranformation.
- Ward: confined to a hospital bed after a motorcycle accident, Arthit is disturbed to discover that the old man covered in tattoos in the next bed is on life support and the leader of a strange cult. In the morning, his followers will make the decision to pull the plug. Arthit just has to spend a very creepy night next to him.
- Backpackers: Two Japanese tourists are picked up hitchhiking by an old truck driver and his young partner. They soon realize the truck is carrying a terrifying cargo.
- Salvage: Mrs. Nuch runs a used car dealership, but doesn’t tell her customers that all the cars have been rebuilt after being involved in deadly accidents. When her young son goes missing after playing in the lot one night, it seems that she will be forced to confront the tragedies that have fuelled her success.
- In The End: It’s a brilliant decision to end with this very funny segment, a parody of the Thai horror filmmaking business. Filming a sequel to Alone, the film crew are unsettled when the actress playing a heavily made-up ghost become sick and has to go to hospital. When she returns unexpectedly, they don’t know if she’s human or a ghost, especially when the hospital calls to inform them that she has died.
An interesting insight is that in three of the segments, the concept of karma is central to the narrative. These hauntings are never without a reason, and this gives the horror a fatalistic sense of inevitability that is quite effective. I was also quite impressed with the camera work in each segment; in particular, the beginning of Ward where the camera is locked to the wheels of a hospital gurney while the soundtrack features the revving engine of a motorcycle.
I would say that Phobia 2 is a great calling card for these directors, and for Thai horror cinema in general. It’s certainly been successful in getting this horrorphobe to seek out the filmmakers’ other films.
Official site of the film
(8/10)
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horror,
thailand
High School (Director: John Stalberg): I’m happy when a genre festival like Toronto After Dark decides to colour outside the lines a bit and bring in something that’s not specifically a horror, science-fiction, or martial arts film. Not that “stoner comedy” hasn’t become a genre unto itself, but sometimes it’s good to reach the non-horror crowd. So I was excited to see High School, (somewhat) fresh from its screenings at Sundance. Unfortunately, it’s a bit of a dud.
When Henry, the smartest kid at his high school, decides to smoke a joint for the first time with his onetime childhood pal Travis, he has no idea that fascist principal Gordon is about to introduce mandatory drug testing for all students, THE VERY NEXT DAY! When he finds out, he and stoner Travis decide that the only way to avoid failing the test is to make everyone at the whole school high. It’s an excellent coincidence that the school is having its extremely popular bake sale, also THE VERY NEXT DAY! They just have to steal some very potent flakes of concentrated THC from the most psycho pot dealer in the world, bake hundreds of brownies, and then switch them with the regular brownies. No problem for the smartest kid in the school and his new friend. Along the way, there’ll also be some male bonding and Henry will win the girl of his dreams and still get to be valedictorian.
Maybe I’m just old. I know these films aren’t supposed to make any sense. And yet, this one rubbed me the wrong way almost from the beginning. Our buddies bore an uncanny resemblance to Michael Cera and Jonah Hill in Superbad, a film I liked quite a bit, despite the similarly unrealistic plot and emotional bonding between two high school seniors going in different directions. The difference is in the writing. Every attempt at relationship-building in the film felt completely tacked on to the madcap action. I can almost see the writer cutting-and-pasting this stuff into the script in a late draft. And apart from Matt Bush as Henry, everyone else’s performance is wildly over-the-top, which is fine in the case of Michael Chiklis playing the evil principal, or Adrien Brody chewing the scenery as Psycho Ed the dealer. But I found the character of Travis Breaux (get it, bro?) and the actor playing him (Sean Marquette) to be insufferably smug. He represents the self-satisfaction of this film, which thinks it’s being edgy but is just charging off in all directions.
I found the treatment of female characters to be particularly poor, bordering on offensive. One of those is an Asian-American whose only function in the film is to provide the filmmakers a way to make repeated bad puns on her last name (Phuc, get it, bro?). The love object has precisely one line, and a number of other women in the film exist only to be ogled, fondled or harassed. This might have been okay in the 80s, but it feels dated and unfunny now.
Worst of all, for a stoner comedy, it actually makes getting high look like the worst thing in the world. Slowing down the audio to make people’s voices sound weird to the stoned isn’t that funny the first time. It’s certainly not funny the third or fourth time, either. Several characters hallucinate and become paranoid after smoking pot, and one decides to ride his skateboard off a ramp into the cafeteria on the next floor down, injuring himself in the process. You might as well have had someone thinking they could fly and jumping off the roof.
There are some very good stoner comedies out there (Harold and Kumar, for a start) so there isn’t any need to see bad ones, no matter how high you are. If this film was trying to be Superbad with weed, it just turned out to be super bad.
(5/10)
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#afterdark10,
stoners
It seems like I’m posting nothing but film festival announcements these days. Fantasia, Shinsedai, and now the big little genre festival that is Toronto After Dark. Now in its fifth year, this intimate 8-day festival (August 13–20), held entirely at the Bloor Cinema, is really hitting its stride. The just-announced lineup is guaranteed to have folks lining up around the block, especially with these in the mix:
- Saturday August 14, 6:00pm: Doghouse — another politically incorrect entry in the burgeoning British horror-comedy canon (Shaun of the Dead, Lesbian Vampire Killers).
- Sunday August 15, 8:45pm: HIGH School — For the horror fraidy-cats (like me!), a stoner comedy featuring Adrien Brody as a pot dealer. Well, that actually sounds pretty scary.
- Monday August 16, 6:00pm: The Last Exorcism — I’ve been curious about this Eli-Roth produced film since it was still being called Cotton. Director Daniel Stamm directed the excellent but little-seen A Necessary Death.
- Wednesday August 18, 6:00pm: Centurion — I’ve been hearing a lot of buzz about this violent sword-and-sandals tale, directed by Neil Marshall (The Descent).
- Friday August 20, 6:00pm: Rubber — a philosophical take on a murderous tire? Yes, it’s French.
- Friday August 20, 8:45pm: The Human Centipede: First Sequence (Closing Gala) — this notorious film will almost certainly sell out first.
And this isn’t even half of the lineup. Films screen just once, so you’ll need to buy your tickets as soon as possible. I suggest NOW. And I’ll see you After Dark.
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scifi
