Bangkok Haunted

This portmanteau horror from Thailand, co-directed by Pisuth Praesaeng-Iam and Oxide Pang (Bangkok Dangerous, The Eye) presents three supernatural tales that contrast old style ghosts with a modern city of nightclubs, computers and mobile phones.

The first story, "Legend of the Drum" starts with a comic-book reading hitch-hiker being surpised by a monster that's somehow connected to an antique drum, destined for a young antiques dealer, Jieb. Soon after receiving the mysterious drum, Jieb beings to be plagued by strange dreams. Believing the drum and dreams to be connected she investigates with the help of her college professor, discovering an 80-year-old mystery…

With Jieb's tale – the first of Praesang-Iam's two contributions – the film-makers reveal their framing device, that of three young women – Jieb, Pan and Kanya – swapping ghost stories in a bar.

Pan's story, "Black Magic Woman" is next, the second installment from Praesang-Iam. Alone and looking for love, Pan's neighbour suggests she try the unguent "Ply Essence", which makes its user irresistible to men. Feeling she has nothing to lose, Pan tries the oil and discovers, to her surprise and delight, that it works. Then the side effects kick in…

Finally, it is Nop's turn, along with that of Pang, with a story of "Revenge" told in the third person. Detective Nop believes that a young woman's death was murder rather than suicide and, against the advice of his superiors, conducts his own investigation, uncovering a mess of secrets…

The casual viewer could easily overlook the fact that Bangkok Haunted has two directors, such is the sameness of Praesaeng-Iam and Pang's respective contributions.

Both men over-emphasise style but have little real substance to back it up. The three tales are all Film School 101 atmospherics – minimal lighting, shadows and fog, jarring edits etc – but deliver little in the way of real suspense or shock.

Worse, this surfeit of stylishness gives the Bangkok Haunted a horribly bloated feel. It moves at a snails pace and cries out for some merciless editing to carve off the fat and rescue the decent 90 minute film contained within.

Maybe the film-makers are aware of these weaknesses, their framing device being full of the self-conscious comments – "Your story ends so easily" "Yeah! It ends with no style" "What about you two? How are you going to end it?" – that suggest the film could be trying to be postmodern and ironic. But that's hardly cutting edge when one considers that Cavalcanti and co and Mario Bava were playing similar games to far greater effect with Dead of Night and Black Sabbath before Praesaeng-Iam and Pang were born.

All told, Bangkok Haunted is somewhat frustrating viewing.

Tartan's DVD of Bangkok Haunted, released as part of their "Asia Extreme" collection is Region 0, meaning it will play on any machine so long as it also supports the PAL format.

There are no problems with picture or sound, with a decent anamorphic widescreen transfer and a 5.1 sound mix that allows for some nice ambient effects.

The film is presented in Thai with optional English subtitles, which seem to be free from translation errors and are legible throughout.

The most substantive extra is a half hour "making of" documentary. Sounds good. Alas, it's one of those made for TV pieces that is more about promotion than critical analysis or insight.

When you've seen one well-groomed young presenter exchange banalities with scarily identikit guests as some MTV wannabe production team endeavour to invest the proceedings with their pathetic notions of visual style, you've seen them all. Be it the USA, the UK, Thailand it's all the same. US cultural hegemony is a wonderful thing, non?

The image also has a permanent 'snow' to it (more pronounced on the programme than the film clips within it) perhaps as a result of PAL conversion.

Other extras related to the film itself comprise the original Thai theatrical trailer, an art gallery, star and director filmographies and film notes by Justin Bowyer. In other words, the usual.

The package is rounded off with a trailer gallery for other releases in the Asia Extreme collection: Pang's The Eye and Bangkok Dangerous, Takashi Miike's Shinjuku Triad Society and City of Lost Souls/Hazard City, and Freezer

Overall, an average DVD of an average film.