See you at the temple
A Buddhist-horror flick aims to cash in on the spiritual aspect of Songkran
Starring James Mackie, Sirapan Watnajinda, Penpak Sirikul. Directed by Saranyu Jiraluck.
As we're tumbling back towards the time of Babel, when humans seem to speak the same language but actually don't, here comes a religious distraction in the form of a Buddhist thriller. The new Thai horror film 9 Wat (literally ''9 temples'') lays siege to the cineplex lobbies hoping to cash in on the spiritual dimension _ if there's still any left _ of Songkran, the wet week when people not only make fools of themselves on the street but are in the mood to pray and make merit. Some think it's best to do so at nine temples, the most effective way to ensure our good fortune.
Well, we may actually need 999 temples to summon enough good omen to see us through this sticky mud. Who'd want to go see a ghost on the screen when we're all becoming ghosts ourselves, walking around in a half-slumber? Exorcism is needed, sure though no movies (or art?) seem capable of that, let alone a well-meaning yet pretty routine superstitious horror like this.
The story is moulded in the form of a road movie. Two young lovers, Nat and Poon (James Mackie and Sirapan Watnajinda) are driving to Chiang Mai on a vacation. They stop to visit Nat's mother (Penpak Sirikul), a devout Buddhist, who tells her son to make merit at nine temples along the road to ward off misfortune. Nat, a cool guy and a graphic designer to boot!, regards his mother's warning as nonsense, and he portends no sign when a young, charismatic monk turns up and asks for a ride with the two lovers to the North.
Along the way, as expected, strange visitations appear to Nat and Poon, who's gradually afflicted more by hallucinations of varying repulsive degrees. The monk knows something though he doesn't say it, or at least not until the final act when the storm arrives and every past life revealed.
The director is Saranyu Jiraluck, a young veteran in the film business but a first-time feature director here. He shows verve and cadence in orchestrating the horror setpieces, but in general the man is bogged down by the shaky script. 9 Wat is conceived through the supernatural Buddhist prism that sermonises _ and trivialises _ the force of karma and turns it into a popular plot twist. In an event that we've seen a film with a challenging attitude like Nak Prok, in which the lines separating monks and criminals are blurred, or in the event of a discussion on the role of monks in political uprisings, the monk in 9 Wat follows the traditional image of peace and wisdom, more a symbol than a full character. He may be the image that we all want to see during Songkran, but perhaps he's not complex enough to represent the intertwining fates and realities the film is intent on projecting.
From Bangkokpost
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