SYNOPSIS:
A horrific incident takes place when a woman suddenly bursts into flames for no apparent reason. She becomes victim to the phenomenon known worldwide as “Spontaneous Human Combustion” (SHC). Mona (Bongkot Kongmalai) is the victim’s daughter, who is forced to get involved with the case. She meets a nurse named Ploy (Archiraya Peeraphatkunchaya) whose mother also gets killed by SHC. Don (Charad Na Songkhla) is a police investigator who gets suspicious of the cause of this incident. With his investigator’s instinct and devotion to justice, Don takes on the mysterious fire case to try to stop it from happening again.
Will the truth behind the deadly fire be exposed as a suicide, murder, accident or the sacrifice to superstitious belief? The mystery must be solved before the dreadful fire burns another victim alive.
MOVIE REVIEW:
Spontaneous human combustion (SPC) is a mysterious and scary phenomenon that had occurred throughout the world. It’s controversial in a way that most of these cases lack thorough scientific investigation and verified records. There are also arguments that these supposedly spontaneous combustion are actually caused by external factors like cigarettes or alcohol. Nevertheless, the SPC phenomenon does have it’s scary qualities as it can occur to anyone and anywhere. When Asian horror films run out of elements (no more handphones, wigs, stairs, apartments, cinema and etc) to spun a tale, we get Burn.
In a way, Burn uses the same trick as Shutter, the popular Thai horror movie did with “real” unexplained and largely unproven phenomenon. It tried to blend a horror story from such occurrences but unlike the successful Thai horror flick, the blend was less effective and affecting in Burn.
Let’s start with the fact that this occurrence generally does not occur that frequently nor does it happen that frequently in one location. In a way, it’s understandable that this movie couldn’t showcase just one or two SPC. It’s simply not entertaining enough for the general audience. However, putting so many SPC incidents together for one story, it could feel rather tacky and that’s the path that Burn had chosen.
It also tried to explain the mysterious SPC under Burn’s context and that took away the grandeur of the phenomenon. Although it tied down nicely with the thriller that it’s trying to build, the whole SPC had reduced to nothing more than another gimmick to lure the horror flicks fan.
Besides dimming the impressiveness of SPC, the story telling of Burn was rather bad too. It used too many flashbacks sequences that often became repetitive and coupled with fancy uses of video editing that seems to be dragging the story along aimlessly to fill up the required screen time. It also tired to be too smart for it’s own good by revealing all too obvious hints to what’s causing all the SPC, making the wait for the revelation a drag to wait.
The various SPC events also occur too conveniently and the dialogues between characters felt rather forced and cringe worthy.
If there’s anything redeeming about Burn, it would be the twist at the end. It was interesting to watch how the guilty evildoer sprouts strong defenses to their case and to a degree; it’s scary how applicable it is to reality. There’s also satisfaction in how the protagonist managed to turn the table on antagonist in a final twist. However it’s too late for the last act to salvage the uninspired usage of SPC for most part of the movie.
SPECIAL FEATURES:
NIL
AUDIO/VISUAL:
The somber soundtrack and visuals that filled this movie is given a fine presentation in this dvd edition.
MOVIE RATING:
DVD
RATING:
Review by Richard Lim Jr
Posted on 13 September 2009
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