After a disappointing school year, Ton (Charlie Taurat) is sent over to a boarding school in the country side and placed in the hands of the cold, uncaring Ms. Pranee (Chintara Sukapatana). It's about as rough an adjustment as you'd expect, especially when the new school features communal dorms and showers that would not be out of place in a prison. The institutional, cold palette the movie uses is all the school scenes doesn't help.
Ton 'befriends' a band of kids who alternately bully and accept him (a pretty accurate depiction of social dynamics at that age, I feel), and that night they gather to tell ghost stories. It's a really great scene - the ghosts they take turns talking about either walk by or are shown in short vignettes that include looking between your own legs (an old Thai superstition) to see the ghost of a hanged woman; Fun!
In any case, there's one ghost they specifically warn Ton about, of a kid their age that drowned in a pool. They tell him never to go to the bathroom at night if the dogs are baying. And sure enough, that night he has to go to take a piss, there's a chorus of dogs howling outside, and he runs into a gh-gh-gh-ghost! He runs back to his cot, bladder undrained, which results in a wet bed the next morning; Not great for his social life.
With everyone against him after that bed-wetting incident, there's just one other kid with whom Ton gets along - Vichien (Sirachuch Chienthaworn) - but Ton's bad luck holds. During a night screening of a Thai knock-off of Mr. Vampire (very charming, and made especially for this movie) Ton discovers that no one else can see Vichien; He's the ghost everyone's talking about.
But Vichien doesn't seem particularly scary - more sad than menacing - and Ton's outcast status hangs heavy over him; Soon the two kids are hanging out again, and Ton manages to work out some of the metaphysics underpinning the haunting. That gets him looking into the mystery of his friend's death... and wondering if he can do something to put him at rest.
It's a sweet, well-observed, funny movie that sheds the horror part pretty quickly, but integrates the supernatural into its yarn, including some pretty striking imagery. It's a bit derivative of The Devil's Backbone, but between that, all the Mr. Vampire references - be on the lookout for an appearance from one of that film's distinctive caskets - and the fact that it takes things in a pretty different direction, I'm just going to chalk it down to some pretty good taste from the writers (Vanridee Pongsittisak,Songyos Sugmakanan,Chonlada Tiaosuwan) and the director (Songyos Sugmakanan).
It's got some severe pacing issues - the film didn't really need to be almost two hours long, and the middle section suffers as a result. It can also get pretty corny. But the kid actors do a really great job - Taurat, in particular, anchors the film effortlessly, and the script is gratifyingly a little more sophisticated than I expected: a few (a little on-the-nose) motifs develop, there's a couple weird touches (a very funny explanation for why the dogs howl at Vichien stands out), and some unexpected developments add nuance to Ton's anger at his dad. I would have adored this movie had I watched it as a kid; As it stands, I still liked it a lot.
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