As Thai film continues to rise in popularity one thing is becoming increasingly clear: Thailand has a remarkably rich and unique history of folklore, magic and the supernatural in general. They have a stack of ghosts and creatures well known and loved – or feared – within their borders that are little known elsewhere. So what happens if you take elements of that traditional Thai folklore and fuse it with the Japanese kaiju giant monster tradition? Garuda.
Little known outside of Thailand – unless you're fortunate enough to have read China Mieville's Perdido Street Station, in which one of the creatures figures large, albeit in a modified and recontextualized form – the garuda looms large in Thai legends. A powerful mythical creature the garuda is a type of pre-buddhist animistic god, an enormous creature with a human body fused with the wings, talons and head of a bird of prey. And just as Mieville reworked the garuda to suit his literary purposes Thai writer-director Monthon Arayangkoon gives the beast an image makeover for his film, casting the powerful god as a raging, building smashing giant monster turned loose on downtown Bangkok.
The film opens with a brief voice over describing a mythic time, a time when legendary creatures ruled the earth in peace, coexisting side by side. The rulers of the skies were the garuda and all was well until one lone creature went renegade, a powerful and vicious beast that turned on its bretheren and the other primal creatures, shedding massive amounts of blood until finally captured and bound deep beneath the surface of the earth.
Jump forward to modern times. A tunneling crew is at work digging a new subway line beneath Bangkok when they strike an unexpected rock deposit. When a mysterious bird like fossil is spotted in the rock work is shut down and young Franco-Thai archaeologist Leena, along with her American assistant Tim, are called in to investigate. Leena's father, you see, was an archaeologist well known for his belief that mythical creatures such as the garuda were based in fact, the garuda itself representing an alternate stream of evolution from bird to humanoid forms, and Leena has taken up her father's work which makes her the most qualified to examine the find. And, oh, did I mention the highly trained military strike force employed in covert operations against legendary beasts? They're called in, too.
This is, of course, the centuries old prison of the rogue garuda and it isn't long before the humans, entirely unaware of what they're doing, have freed the beast to roam the subway tunnels beneath the city, killing for sport and food while inexorably making its way to the surface. What begins as a cat and mouse game – the military isolated and picked off one by one, the civilians simply fleeing in terror – erupts into full scale mass destruction once the beast breaks free of the tunnels. If the beast's bretheren could only contain it, not kill it, what chance do us lowly people have?
Garuda is Thailand's first ever attempt at a kaiju-styled film and it is a more than respectable first effort. While the effects may not compare to a big budget American production they certainly clock in somewhere above your typical Sci Fi Channel effort. It is loaded with a fistful of quality characters and set pieces. The creature is formidable, the tension palpable, and the kills memorable. The two lead military figures are great fun, Tim provides some goofy comic relief and the film even tries to say something meaningful on race relations. It may not add anything particularly new to the genre but Garuda is a film that knows exactly what it wants to be, sets reasonable goals for itself, and hits all of its marks with style.
Released as part of Media Blasters increasingly inaccurately named Tokyo Shock line the film has gotten a solid DVD release. The feature is presented in anamorphic widescreen with audio offered in both the original Thai and a serviceable English dub, both language options offered in 2.0 and 5.1 The transfer is generally good though there is the occasional fleck of dirt on the print and the subtitles are excellent. Also included is a twenty-plus minute making of feature that tracks the films progress from the director's deep love of kaiju films through the initial concepts and right on through to completion.
Garuda may well be a relatively minor title – it won't go spawning any sort of franchise a la Godzilla or Gamera – but it's a fun one, certainly worth a look for fans of the genre.