A dark spirit haunts a small rural community in Western Thailand. It gruesomely kills off a young girl in the film's cold open just for funsies, and then sets its sights on the middle daughter of a large farming family.
After that initial jolt, the film goes through a morass of trite family drama and cheesy jump scares. The sisters enjoy a close bond, but once Yam (Rattanawadee Wongth ong) gets possessed, she starts going on night jaunts, eating raw meat, and lying to get her loving older sister (Denise Jelilcha Kapaun) into trouble. Meanwhile, eldest brother Yak (Nadech Kugimiya) arrives from a stint with the military to show off his physique and take a more hands-on approach in fighting off the invading spirit.
The drama is unconvincing - very saccharine and basic - and for a while there, the horror side of things isn't a lot better: creepy figures staring from afar, jump scares, and even that old tired chestnut of scary children's drawings. Slow burns are just slow when they're this tired and trite. No haunted toys, at least.
But as creepy events pile on, the film gathers a little momentum and gets a lot more fun. There's a great scene among the cornstalks where Yak, shotgun in hand, confronts the spirit that convinced me this was going to be worth it... and yeah, the film does get a lot better.
By the time a family friend (Ongart Cheamcharoenpornkul) and an exorcist (Phorjate Kanpetch) get involved around the halfway mark, the film starts churning out crazy, energetic scenes that very clearly out director Taweewat Wantha as an Evil Dead fan. It's derivative, never scary, and the pacing is still a little slow (this movie had no business being two hours long), but there's enough over-the-top gory action to satisfy any deadite cravings.
The acting is stilted and overtly earnest, the effects are fun but clearly low budget, and the writing is a little on the corny side, but I think the one thing that most bothered me (besides the bloated running time) is the soundtrack by Terdsak Janpan; it's hilariously overbearing, piling on the saccharine during the cutesy sisterhood scenes and trite horror signifiers during any bit where the spirit is even mentioned.
All the supernatural stuff purports to be 'based on real events', which led me to think there was some folklore behind the story, but it's actually based on a sort of Thai creepy pasta published in 2015, which the same author Krittanont then adapted into a novel. I guess he claims that it all actually happened to him; Sure, buddy. The script's by Sorarat Jirabovornwisut and Thammanan Chulaborirak.
At the very end there's a goofy scene setting up a sequel; As long as it follows up more on this movie's climax than its languid first half, I'm all for it.
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