IFFR 2009: THE COFFIN (DIRECTOR'S CUT) Review

This year's International Film Festival Rotterdam contained a segment on Asian ghost films, with the programmers bringing in several entries from Thailand, Japan, Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam...

Horror, and in particular ghost and spirit-based horror, is very popular in especially Thailand and Indonesia, who produce a vast amount of these movies every year.
So while the festival had no shortage of choice, the big question with each and every one of these is: can it bring something new to the table, or are we watching the ten-thousandth Ringu-clone?

Which brings me to Ekachai Uekrongtham's "The Coffin", which strangely enough falls in both categories. It's a schizophrenic film from beginning till end, and the reason for this is easily explained: it started out as one kind of movie, but was forced by necessity to become something else.

The interesting part of the movie deals with a true existing Thai ritual, where people allow themselves to be mock-buried alive in a real coffin to "cheat" death or bad karma from reaching them. Indeed, the opening shot is nothing short of breathtaking as you see hundreds of people going through this ritual, the coffins stacked in concentric circles around a group of huge Buddha statues. The two protagonists both try this method but while it seems to be successful, each discovers in their own way that there are some unforeseen side-effects...

More after the break, including a picture of that mass-burial!
(Yes, I am shameless...)

Short History:

Strange but true, "The Coffin" was actually partly made using IFFR-money, or the Hubert Bals-fund to be exact. That money was given based on a pitch by director Ekachai Uekrongtham ("Beautiful Boxer"), who wanted to use the Thai burial ritual as a starting point for a story about loss, redemption and acceptance. Unfortunately, festival money or not, he never managed to get a large enough amount to make the movie he wanted.

So he made a typically Asian ghost movie instead. With the project suddenly being labeled "horror", funding was no longer a problem. "The Coffin" premiered in Thailand last year, where it indeed enjoyed commercial success.

But that wasn't the version we saw at the festival: we had a "Director's Cut" which included different footage, closer to Ekachai Uekrongtham original intentions.


The Story:

Two totally unrelated people, Chris and Sue, are both shown to be desperate. Chris's girlfriend is in a coma due to a hard-to-treat brain infection. Sue has run to Thailand from her wedding in Hong Kong because she is dying from lung cancer and tries to keep it a secret.
Both have tried all conventional methods already but nothing has helped. At their wits' end, they decide to participate in the Thai ritual of mock-burial, where in the course of a few days thousands of people are temporarily buried alive to avoid bad luck.

But when their coffins are nailed shut and sensory deprivation sets in, both Chris and Sue start hallucinating like mad. Chris even nearly dies of a stroke brought on by claustrophobia and wakes up in a hospital.

Yet soon after that they discover that the ritual does indeed seem to have been beneficial. The girlfriend awakes healthy, and Sue's cancer has goes into spontaneous remission. All seems well until both Sue and Chris are being plagued by ghastly apparitions which try to harm them...


The Movie:

As director Ekachai Uekrongtham himself explained during the Question & Answer session afterwards, the actual ritual makes no mention of bloodthirsty ghosts trying to kill you, indeed the spirits seen in this movie have no place in the concept of Buddhism.
And this immediately gives away the movie's largest problem. Half of "The Coffin" is an intelligently and respectfully made, well acted, impeccably shot film about acceptance of death as an inevitable factor in your life. The other half is a very, VERY generic Asian ghost story full of cheap scares and fake shocks, basically a prime example of all I hate about this sub-genre.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: suddenly showing an ugly face while the sound volume does "TADAAAA!!!" is a very easy way to make me jump, but do not expect me to commend you for it. I am no fan of the "generic jump-scare", let alone the "LOUD jump-scare"! Kudos to Ekachai Uekrongtham to have one close to the beginning which did come as a surprise, and I liked it, but that was the only one. All others were brainless, or worse: fake. Come on people, this is soooooo old...

The Thai version apparently contains even more bloody ghost-jumps and louder sound effects, both edited in afterwards by the producers according to director Uekrongtham.
He also confessed to being somewhat scared of watching that version as it made HIM jump, and was glad the festival showed his own cut instead.

The ugly split between good movie versus bad movie runs through more aspects of the film, like acting. Karen Mok and Ananda Everingham (of the original "Shutter" fame, and who still looks a lot like Orlando Bloom) do fine work here, especially in the more difficult scenes. But as soon as the ghosts appear some of their actions become unbelievable and funnily enough so does their acting. That is of course the script's fault, not their's, but it's a shame when you're wrenched out of a performance like that. You can clearly see which parts had the director's loving attention and which parts... did not.

And that's such a shame, for when this movie is good it truly delivers. That opening shot might have been the most beautiful one I've seen this festival, a definite "Oh Yeah!" moment. Tension is built admirably in places, and there are some twists I didn't see coming. But whenever the movie becomes deliberately creepy it also becomes incredibly predictable, never failing to deliver on the tired clichés, solely relying on the cinema's sound installation to make you jump.


Conclusion:

Based on what I've seen I would have loved to see Ekachai Uekrongtham's originally intended movie, but alas, this is all we have at the moment. "The Coffin" in its current form is, even in the "Director's Cut", a flawed piece.
Chuck out all the angry ghost stuff and you might have been left with a very nice short movie, sporting a flashy start and an emotionally moving ending. Worthy of an episode of, say, "4BIA". But now, it seems an easily bored person is holding a remote and sometimes zaps to another channel, where an inferior horror flick is playing.

Who says I recommend everything?
Well, you can at least check out the first ten minutes. Stellar stuff indeed...

The Rotterdam audience awarded this film an in my opinion rather high rating of 3.6 out of 5.