Fantasia 2010: PHOBIA 2 Review

[Many thanks to Mathieu Li-Goyette of Panorama Cinema for the following review, and to Maude Michaud for the translation.]

Two years ago, four Thai filmmakers, masters of Thai-horror, scared festival goers with 4BIA.  This time, Wongpoom and Pisanthanakun, the team behind Shutter and Alone, offer us the two highlights of this sequel.  Wongpoom's segment tells the story of a used car saleswoman who is looking for her lost son in the garage where she works, while Pisanthanakun, who directed the most brilliant segment of this collective project, focuses on the shooting of a Thai-horror film gone bad.

The intro from Purijitpanya, the director of Body, deals with a young delinquent's exile after killing his father in a car accident. During a trek in a tropical forest, he disturbs a spirit prisoner of a giant tree's bark. Haunted by remorse, he will descend into madness and turn into one of those beings. The piercing score and cinematic form of this episode titled "Novice" are reminiscent of the techniques used by Masaki Kobayashi in Kwaïdan. The mystical art direction, the predominance of string instruments, and a preference for implying rather than showing contribute to creating a climate of fright, effectively reinforced by the main character's terrified expression; his fear quickly creeps up on us and becomes ours.  The strength of the film, just like the previous one, is based on the different types of horror specific to the filmmakers. How does horror work? How does it scare us? Focusing on the theme of respect for the dead, the stories of Phobia 2 blend the spirit world into ours.

The second story, "Ward", takes place in a hospital room where a motorcyclist is recovering while the room's other patient, an old occult master, is dying.  As the man's followers come to pay him their last respects, our protagonist spies on the ceremony and the dying man. If the protagonist of the first segment disrespected death by allowing his teenage stupidity to accidentally take the life of his father, the young man in the second story does so by taking a certain pleasure in becoming a voyeur of his neighbor's last moments.  Aptly directed by Poolvoralaks, this segment uses objects to create dread in a way that is reminiscent of a Jack-in-the-box; camera angles are cleverly used to create a surprise effect as expectation builds tension, the audience never knowing what will happen. Be it the curtains, the IV-bag or the alarm button to call the nurse, the objects in this story antagonize our main character like it is often the case in haunted house movies. Once again, the ending punishes our hero by making him one of the spirits, no longer worthy of the living world we live in.

In "Backpackers" from Sugmakanan, a young child becomes undead, once again referencing the theme of reincarnation as being the driving force of the different segments of this film.  As far as decoding the film goes, it is not as simple as "dead men attacking living ones without reason". The lack of respect for the dead disrupts the reincarnation cycle as proves the reincarnation as a tree of the first segment, the accident victim of the second, the living dead of the third or the possessed cars of the fourth. Contrary to j-horror (horror films from Japan, such as Ringu and Ju-On) which models its mythology on Shinto and the coexistence of two worlds, the spirits of Phobia 2 are reincarnated and thrown in a deformed representation of their own personal heavens. A secret haunts each of these lost souls, perceived as frightening because they're misunderstood by the guilt ridden characters they follow. "Backpackers" is about two Japanese hitchhikers travelling with Thai truckers who have to deliver a van full of carcasses with a deadly secret that is about to be revealed through flashbacks. Penniless, a bunch of young villagers accepted to sell their stomachs to cocaine dealers.  Contaminated by the drug, they rise from the dead and pursue those responsible for their demise, not only the truckers, but also the society corrupted by poverty, corruption and street rules. 

Sugmakanan's technique is the most striking, rude and violent of the whole anthology with its quick cuts and zooms-in throwing the image at us. Even more so with its lighting and topic, "Backpackers" serves as a good launch pad for the two strongest pieces: "Salvage" and "In the End".  The story of the car saleswoman we mentioned earlier has to do with finding the history of the cars, all of which were previously owned by people who died in accidents on the road. While recycling the metal of these rusty carcasses, the mother will find her son prisoner of the engine of her car, devoured by the machine, which suggests an occult payback for her own greed which pushed her to try to maximize profits at all cost. Her son is literally reincarnated in this alloy of skin and pistons - symbolizing the price to pay for our mistakes.  Chased by a fear of the dead, the heroes of Phobia 2 all have a point in common: they seized someone else's life for their own profit; corpses become resources that promise profit and fame. Buddhism, a religion favoring reincarnation and the soul's good behavior is here broken by men's greed as metaphorically displayed by the engine in "Salvage". 

The next segment embraces the darkness and challenges its main actress by having her act alone for 20 minutes in a story that offers a certain macabre fairy-tale vibe (in the same vein as the foggy forest of "Novice") and is reminiscent of some of the masters of Thai cinema, mainly Apichatpong Weerasethakul (Tropical Malady). 

This last story by Pisanthanakun concludes this horror opus with a self-referential 'movie-within-a-movie' starring the protagonists of his films Shutter and Alone.  There are no ghosts this time around, only a film crew trying to complete the shooting of Alone 2. Doubts arise that the woman playing the wet-haired ghost might be an undead soul who came back to haunt them for the length of the shoot. This segment offers a reflection on the use of the ghosts in cinema for which Pisanthanakun suggests that these stories represent a serious lack of respect for the dead. Using a cynical tone, this sketch kills off its characters in the end (just like the other segments), but this time using an accident. The ghosts might be gone, but we are left with question as to the usefulness of shooting these spirits on film, and on the influence such works have on our own perception of the dead.  Even if "In the End" doesn't have any ghosts, a series of coincidences keep hounding our heroes. Aptly manipulating the music and the editing, the tension created is everything we would expect from a horror film, even if it could easily be a simple making-of. The director's invisible hand pushes the victims to their tragic demise all while reinforcing that the master of the story remains the filmmaker, who is the one capable of filming both "real" and "fake" ghosts. Be it through terror, panic or fright, this film shows that the new wave of Thai horror films is gaining a clear maturity by using the conventions of cinema (including American films) to create new storytelling methods for an ever-increasing gallery of personal visions. A genuine attempt at rewriting the clichés of the genre, these five projects cleverly united are reminiscent of its equivalent in fantasy literature (brought by Poe and Lovecraft): the discovery of new fears, new talents and a new kind of horror.  

Review by Mathieu Li-Goyette