Guess what it will come out if the writers of 13-Beloved, Chookiat Sakveerakul and Eakasit Thairaat, teamed up again and employed the country’s most shocking news into a film. In 2001, a famous obsterician was charged of murdering his wife, also a doctor, and slashing her into pieces to be flushed in several toilets around the Bangkok city. This effort finally came out with the genre-binding suspense and psychological horror Body, in which the helmer Chookiat wanted to help his film-school junior Paween Purijitpanya in his directorial debut. Body became a multi-layered, character-detailed film, and, in my opinion, the best Thai horror in 2007.
The film starts off with a dramatic music theme culminating to a plaintive female singing voice in a concert hall, where Cholasith, a young man, just wakes up from his sleep. Cholasith leaves the hall earlier and goes straight back home where he suffers from his repetitously strange dreams - a female ghost trying to kill him, a baby ghost crawling around the house, a black cat eating human parts, and a mysterious man killing a woman, and slashing her into pieces. His doctor recommends him to see a female psychotherapist. She seems to look fine on surface, but her hands are shaky while approaching him. She has got a clue – a female name, “Dararai.” And when she tries to trace down this mysterious woman, all the people she talks to ends up with tragic deaths. But why she has to find the clue about this woman? Is Cholasith a normal patient?
Body smartly interplays between the subconscious and the superstitous world engulfing the protagonist Cholasith. On the surface, all happenings are unexplainable because they are spelled under the control of superstition. Ghosts come out from where to where. But as the story goes on, viewers are now pushed into an uncertain situation - whether the ghosts are real or if they are only in the protagonist’s subconscious. And the script team wisely used every single details and mise-en-scène that will culminate in revealing the final truth. All performers did good jobs in delivering their messages.
The unnecessary CG heavyweight made the film a bit pretencious sometimes, and the monster-lookalike ghost reminds us of the B-grade spooks. They are not terrifying, but not eye-pleasurable. Pics are heightened in bloody and morbid imagination. Theme song is excellent in delivering another side of effect, not only for entertainment and creativity. A song sometimes can also destroy one’s life.