One spirit in particular piques her interest, and challenges her acting skills to the fullest as she reenacts the circumstances surrounding the disappearance and death of Meen, a former Miss Thailand. It soon appears that Ting is losing herself as she prepares for the reenactment of the crime, succumbing to violent flashbacks involving Meen, and disturbing, sometimes bloody, visitations by earthbound ghosts looking for help or vengeance.
The ghostly imagery in The Victim, directed by Monthon Arayangkoon, moves between poetically eerie glimpses of a genuinely unnerving twilight world filled with pitiable and vengeful spirits at arm's reach, and the usual shocks we are now accustomed to. The pacing slowly moves the story along, and the interplay of bright colors across light and dark scenes, contrasting with darker-toned scenes earlier in the film, provides visual cuing for the sudden story-within-the-story transition. Just when you think you know what's going on, bingo!, you scramble for the remote to go back and see if you missed something.
In an unusual move for Thai horror, Arayangkoon pulls the rug out from under Ting, Meen, and the whole criminal scene investigation storyline by beginning a new storyline, creating a story you thought was "real" within the real story. While The Victim starts out as a ghost story, it morphs into a "who's the ghost?" story, and even then, not satisfied with changing Ting's role completely, and the principal ghost involved, the reasons for all the vengeful havoc befalling Ting and others is revealed to be entirely different from what it seemed to be.
The Victim is an ambitious, more complex film than usually comes out of T-Horror cinema, and it can be confusing, especially with the little-helpful English subtitles that fail to capture the nuances of the Thai language; but it's still a pleasantly surprising departure from the usually straightforward horror fare we've come to expect from Asia. The cultural oddity, for us, with Thai police reenacting crime scenes using actors and the alleged criminal to provide the press with a photo op, and perhaps the spirits of victims with a modicum of peace, separates us from the business as usual horror shown in American cinema, and puts us off-balance immediately.
Article comments
1 - Lisa McKay
Congratulations! This article has been selected for syndication to the Advance family of websites and to Boston.com, which will allow even more readers to enjoy it.
2 - Azael
I saw this movie yesterday In Mexico.
It was rather interesting. I'm glad to know me and my cousin weren't the only ones who thought the same about the movie. The whole, story within a story, change of pace, change of plot kind of thing. I couldn't decide if it was a good movie or not. I certainly didn't get bored with it, but i didn't get obsessed with it like I do with movies i like. In the end i decided to just say it was an interesting weird movie. Did anyone else get the feeling like YOU were being involved in the movie after the "Movie Editing" scenes where they see the faces ? For a couple of minutes, I felt like them because I saw the shots but never noticed them. This is definitely A movie to watch at night. The Credits are awesome too... its one of those "Oh Sh-- really ? O.o" moments.