POSSESSED (PEE KAO PEE OOK) DVD (2013)

SYNOPSIS: A group of college students pick a remote cemetery as a filming location for their short film ‘senior year’ project. What was meant to be a sad romantic love story turns into a horror film when the inaugural shooting date coincides with the Chinese Ghost Festival. The real terror happens when Ji (“Apittha” means “Klaiudom”), a mysterious girl who just joined the crew got possessed by a forlorn spirit. The evil spirit wants the crew to help it do something .. or they won’t be able to get out of the place forever.

MOVIE REVIEW:

Because of Pee Mak being the highest-grossing movie of all time, the horror comedy genre seems to be receiving a huge revival at the Thai movie industry. Obviously made on a cheap budget and cashing in the aftermath of Pee Mak’s success, Possessed (Pee Kao Pee Ook) is more on silly laughs than featuring actual scare.

A group of youngsters including a cheaply hire male lead, David Asavanond from Countdown are making a horror short film for their graduate project at the Chinese cemetery on the first day of Hungry Ghost Festival no less. We are told in the beginning that their film is inspired by a real-life tragic love story in which the female ended up hanging herself at the pavilion at the cemetery.

That sounds pretty promising for the setup until almost after 45 minutes into the movie, you realized Possessed is more satisfied at throwing audiences with every trick used in the horror film school of filmmaking instead of telling a coherent story. In other words, there are plenty of cheap jump-scares, cheesy make-up effects and unnecessary amount of characters screaming their heads off to get you through.

As the title already forewarned you, one of the characters expectedly got possessed by a spirit which communicates in halting Teochew! (sorry for those who do not understand the dialect, subs are strangely not provided). Thus the group of students find themselves held hostage by the spirit unless they fulfilled it’s wishes and they are sent on a mission to retrieve it’s body through a Komodo dragons-filled pond!

Ultimately, this Thai horror comedy has nothing new to offer, the laughs are cringing and every plot twist is familiar if not at the back of every seasoned horror fan’s hand. Don’t pee at a tombstone, don’t smear the picture and please don’t disturb a corpse in a coffin. Come on, you must stupid to do the last and this group of moronic students actually did all of the above.

SPECIAL FEATURES:

NIL

AUDIO/VISUAL:

Visual is jarring and filled with overly dark levels. Audio is loud if you consider that a must factor for horrors.  

MOVIE RATING:

DVD RATING :

Review by Linus Tee