DVD Review: The House / Cert: 18 / Director: Monthon Arayangkoon / Screenplay: Sompope Vejchapipat, Monthon Arayangkoon / Starring: Intira Chaloenpura, Chutcha Rukinanon, Chamun Wanwinwatsara / Release Date: June 4th
Made in 2007, and only just getting a release in the UK now, The House is a Thai horror film that starts out as a pretty run-of-the-mill ghost story before turning into something a little bit stranger.
Shalinee (Chaloenpura) is an investigative television reporter who is commissioned to work on a report of a murder case from six years previous. Whilst snooping around, she discovers some connections and similarities between the murder she’s looking into as well as two others. It transpires that all three murders were committed by doctors who killed their partner. The similarities don’t end there though. It also becomes clear that all three doctors resided, at some time or another, in a house that sits just behind the hospital. Shalinee is given warnings of a supernatural kind not to enter the house, but she ignores them. Once she has entered the eponymous property, she discovers something startling which sets a pre-ordained path into motion involving her and her accountant boyfriend – one that she can’t stop.
There are a number of interesting scenes involving the accused doctors, one of which looks particularly insane when being questioned and the gore quotient is impressive for a ghost/haunted house story. There are a few unsettling moments of ghost activity, but nothing that you haven’t really seen before, particularly from previous J-Horror, Korean and Thai entries into the genre – except for one nearer the end of the film that comes across quite strange, on which the story hinges.
The film has a bafflingly bizarre denouement and is probably 10-15 minutes too long for its own good, but then if directors and writers didn’t try something new occasionally, we’d be complaining about a lack of originality – which is something you can hardly ever accuse the Far East of being guilty of, especially when it comes to horror films. You’ve seen better, especially from that side of the cinema world, but you’ve seen a lot worse too. Perhaps some of this movie is literally lost in translation?
Special Features: None
