The legend of the ghost of Nang Nak is a part of Thai folklore, the story of an 19th Century 'angry ghost' who lived in a bucolic palm-fringed village outside of Bangkok named Pra Khanong..
By 2005, Pra Khanong is part of the dirty old metropolis, the giant grey concrete slab of Bangkok. No longer a place for a rural ghost.
I have never even been there - there's no compelling reason to go. It is ten minutes from where I live, but it is just another part of inner city urban blight nowadays.
This movie works because it treats Bangkok not as a glitzy tourist venue, full of pachyderms, tuk tuks, ladyboys and long-tail boats, but a functioning, ordinary, third-world city in which regular Thai people live with limited budgets and modern fears.
Into this is transported a semi-Gothic, semi J-Horror story, that derives from the old mythology.
Thai movies are often unsophisticated, self-referential and burlesque. This one doesn't fall into that trap, perhaps because it is Directed by a Westerner and doesn't play to stereotype.
I liked it.
By 2005, Pra Khanong is part of the dirty old metropolis, the giant grey concrete slab of Bangkok. No longer a place for a rural ghost.
I have never even been there - there's no compelling reason to go. It is ten minutes from where I live, but it is just another part of inner city urban blight nowadays.
This movie works because it treats Bangkok not as a glitzy tourist venue, full of pachyderms, tuk tuks, ladyboys and long-tail boats, but a functioning, ordinary, third-world city in which regular Thai people live with limited budgets and modern fears.
Into this is transported a semi-Gothic, semi J-Horror story, that derives from the old mythology.
Thai movies are often unsophisticated, self-referential and burlesque. This one doesn't fall into that trap, perhaps because it is Directed by a Westerner and doesn't play to stereotype.
I liked it.
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