Over the past decade, Thai filmmakers' reputation as craftsmen of horror-fests has been cemented. Business with the dead is more lucrative than with the living. And besides the whole necropolis of dispensable shock-circus aimed at making easy bucks (international bucks too sometimes), occasionally we're treated to a flash of intelligence in a genre that refuses to be dead, potted and buried. Though the sum of all fears may not exceed the quota in Ruedoo Ron Nan Chan Tai (Last Summer), this is a rare ghost flick with a clever script and a dash of real drama.
Ruedoo Ron Nan Chan Tai (Last Summer)
Starring Jirayu Laong-manee, Panpan Udomsilp, Pimpakarn Praekhunatham. Directed by Kittitat Tangsirikit, Sitsiri Mongkolsiri and Saranyu Jiralak.
In fact, it's the human ramifications of jealousy and teen angst at the heart of the film that makes it tick, and not the corpse-chic goth-faced demon with dislocated shoulders who sneaks out of her red coffin.
Last Summer is one 90-minute film that's made up of three distinct parts, each directed by a different director (Kittitat Tangsirikit, Sitsiri Mongkolsiri and Saranyu Jiralak), and linked by the death of a girl early in the story. The script is written by one of the finest at work today, Kongdej Jaturanrasmee, who also produces the film for a new studio called Talent One. What the film knows _ and what we should remember _ is that the best ghost story is the one that's actually about humans. Death resonates and ripples, and the living can call it either haunting or remembrance.
Or we call it guilt, the ancient demon that keeps haunting our bosom. Last Summer begins with a teenage girl, Joy (Pimpakarn Praekhunatham), posting on Facebook that she wants to die. Her suitor, Singh (Jirayu Laong-manee), exploits Joy's depressed mood and asks her to go on a trip to the sea. Two more friends join them, Meen (Panpan Udomsilp) and Garn (Kirt Sathapanapitakit), and their first night of alcohol and mischief ends with Joy coughing blood and lying dead in Meen's arm. After the ensuing agitation, the three friends set out on a dreary misadventure to dispose of the body, which is a feat that's always much harder than it sounds.
What appears at first like a routine shallow-grave horror branches out into something else. Like most ghost stories, revenge is the engine of Last Summer's narrative as the dead (female, as is often the case) returns to terrify those who've wronged her. But the film has a few tricks up its sleeve and it spawns two extra heads from its original one. The "second section" follows Meen, now a damsel in distress after the shocking death of Joy, and the film becomes a hormone-filled high school drama about teen rivalry and adolescent cruelty, on top of Joy's demonic return. In the third section, the film shifts its focus to Ting, Joy's younger brother, and their overbearing mother, both being forced to re-examine their past actions that might have contributed to the girl's demise.
With layers, surprises, and the focus on human weakness rather than the ghost's strength, Last Summer is a pleasant surprise amidst the glut of trashy horror. It's ironic that the film is least impressive when it labours to be scary _ the reliance of the same-old shallow-focus composition, hammering sound-effect cues and the struggle to create a visual fright are yawn-inducing. Watch out for men, not ghosts, and Last Summer proves the old saying that the living are scarier than the dead.
