Phobia

Designed as a portmanteau film, this Thai horror isn't a portmanteau as we know and love them, from their glory days in the 1960s and '70s with such great titles as Tales from the Crypt, Dr Terror's House of Horrors and Asylum, but four movies that play sequentially, without any framing story. From what I can gather, this was the brainchild of three of Thailand's hottest horror directors who are a little sick of the stale, and rather samey, movies emanating from Asia so decided to make four short movies of just under half an hour each to play as one movie and take the viewer on a two-hour thrill ride.

The first segment, Happiness, takes place solely in an apartment and is entirely dialogue free. All information is text based and comes across through SMS messages and Web pages sent and received by a nameless teenage girl. The first shot shows her on the balcony of her apartment, texting 'I'm lonely' to one of her friends. Housebound because of a broken leg, this young woman is unable to work so has fallen behind on her bills and now has the landlady banging at the door.

When she receives a text message from an unknown sender, she contemplates what to do before replying and asking 'r u a guy or gal?' and, when the reply comes with the latter, she excitedly texts back. Things seem quite fun until they agreed to swap pictures of one another and she holds up her end of the bargain but he responds by sending hers straight back. To compound matters, every time she phones his number, she gets the message that number can be reached. Also, and rather cryptically, he says that he is in that photo and has been alone for nearly 100 days. When she looks on the Internet, our protagonist sees a message board about a young suicide who was buried with his cellphone nearly 100 days ago.

Next up is Tit For Tat, revenge horror set in high school in which a young, poor student is being mercilessly picked on by the cool kids but this seemingly harmless bullying becomes far more sinister when the kid inadvertently reveals that the other students had been smoking marijuana. Shoving him and his bike on the back of a truck, they speed up the highway, beating him as they go before throwing his bike off the side and then dropping him on to the asphalt.



Not sure if he is alive or dead, they assume his absence is down to their threat about finding a new school but it isn't long before some form of supernatural justice is being dealt out and he appears, beaten but unbowed and full of the fury of hell. One of the gang soon remembers seeing him chanting a strange prayer in front of an incense stick and they cleverly deduce that he was practising black magic. The spell he created kills the person who looks at a particular page in his book so it istime for some Final Destination type justice from beyond the grave.

Directed by one half of the team that made Shutter, In the Middle is a ghost story that gives away the endings to Shutter, The Sixth Sense, and The Others so, if you haven't seen those and don't want them spoiled, skip to the next film. This is the one film of the four that goes for outright laughs as a comedy horror and follows four high school friends on their rafting holiday. One night in the tent, one of them tells a ghost story about how the one who slept on the end mysteriously found himself up a tree with a succubus but, seeing his friends' worried faces, he laughs off his tale, jokingly saying that if he died, he'd come back to haunt the one in the middle.



The next day, they are approaching some rapids and he is messing around, standing up like Leonardo DiCaprio in Titanic, shouting "I'm the king of the World!" but then, halfway through the quick moving water, the boat capsizes and one of them is nowhere to be seen. That night, no one wants to be the person sleeping in the middle just in case his seemingly flippant threat is true so peculiar sleeping arrangements are called for and, when one of them goes for a pee in the middle of the night, the question "Why are ghosts always females with white faces and long, straight dark hair?" is answered and makes the group ponder their very existence.

The title of the final film actually made me laugh a little because of Lost in Translation and the stereotype in which Asians can't pronounce their Rs properly "Lip my stockings?", so Last Flight doesn't quite have the impact the filmmaker probably hoped for, or is it just me? Anyway, this instalment follows a stewardess who is given sole responsibility for a Princess from the fictitious country of Vanistan who was really mean to her on one journey, insinuating that she's been having an affair with the Prince, and driving the young woman to sabotage her food.



When the Princess dies, the same airline is chartered to take her body back and the same stewardess (or air flight attendant to use modern term) is left alone in the aeroplane with the Princess's body as, being royalty, her corpse can't be taken back in the cargo hold. This is going to be no ordinary flight as, during takeoff in a storm, the body comes loose and slides down the aisle. This is only the beginning of Pin's problems as she is increasingly haunted by the corpse and the captain won't believe her.

Taking this one at a time rather than as one whole movie, I found Happiness to be the best of the four as it is much moreclaustrophobic, involving and atmospheric than any of the others. Tit For Tat really annoyed me due to the overly frenetic direction, reliance on special effects, dubious green screen and uniformly unlikeable characters. In the Middle seemed slightly disjointed as it didn't work properly as a horror comedy, which is a difficult thing to do, and it was neither funny enough nor scary enough to work as either. Last Flight was pretty effective and it works a bit like that Nightmare at 20,000 Feet episode from The Twilight Zone: The Movie except it is less scary! There are certainly some jumps to be had, but this isn't the finest example of Asian horror and there are much better genre films out of Thailand.

The Disc

Extra Features
There is a 12 minute featurette containing interviews with members of the cast and crew who talk about the films in which they appear or made, either what inspired them, why they made them, how they made them or what is so good about that particular segment. There is some behind the scenes footage so it acts a little like a making of featurette but, at 12 minutes, it isn't long enough to give you a proper insight into how the movie was made.

There is also the theatrical trailer.


The Picture
As each instalment has a different director and story, each has a different look so the tone of Happiness is worlds apart from Tit For Tat and the amount of CGI differs from story to story. Overall, the picture is very good; clear and vibrant colours and good contrast levels. There are a couple of instances where the level of detail in the dark scenes could be better and the CGI is all too obvious but this is generally a pleasing picture.

The Sound
Given the choice of Dolby Digital 5.1, DTS 5.1 or Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo, I started with DTS but then switched to stereo before quickly going to DD 5.1 which I found to be the clearest in terms of dialogue and the best at creating atmosphere from the surround speakers. Obviously the stereo track doesn't feature when you're looking at the surrounds, so this is a battle between Dolby and DTS which I thought Dolby won.

The subtitles are very good and, with only one exception, error free.


Final Thoughts
Phobia is a rather unconventional portmanteau film and there is no framing story and the instalments aren't exactly thematically linked. As such, you'll have to take each short film on its own and could quite easily just watch one of them when you have about 25 minutes to kill. The quality varies throughout, and I found Happiness to be the best of the four stories and the one I'd probably choose to watch again over any of the others. Still, this is perhaps worth a watch and is probably more for fans of Asian horror cinema and particularly the directors involved than casual genre fans.