The Irresistible Allure Of Thai Horror

From Shutter To Nang Nak, And Cracked To Operation Undead, We Just Can't Pry Our Eyes Away From Thai Horror Films. To Discover Why Their Work Is So Mesmerisingly Terrifying, I Speak With Three Filmmakers From Thailand.

- SUFFIAN HAKIM

ONE COULD ARGUE THAT 2024 is the year of Thai horror. With the release of Pee Nak 4, The Elite of Devils, Haunted Universities 3, and There Will Be Zombies, Thai horror films have reached a new level this year.

Two of this year’s Thai releases have garnered international popularity: the new Netflix hit Terror Tuesday: Extreme, based on a popular Thai radio show and podcast, and Operation Undead, the well-received new World War II zombie horror film currently making its way through film festivals around the globe. The latter was co-produced with Singaporean companies IFA Media and Threesixzero Productions.

A big reason for their popularity is that Thai movies are deeply informed by real-world socioeconomic realities, creating a sense of familiarity that allows the scares to properly fester in our subconscious. They’re also deeply rooted in humanity, never shying away from the stirring displays of emotions that many stiff-upperlip Western filmmakers tend to avoid. You can see this in films such as Laddaland (2011), which portrays the vulnerability of the middle class, revealing that unemployment, economic instability, and the fight to safeguard one’s family can be far more terrifying than the sinister spirit Makhin, which rarely appears on screen.

Likewise, The Promise (2017) exposes the horrors of the fragile global financial system as the 1997 economic crash tears apart two best friends, devastating their families and shattering their bond. In Cracked (2022), art is portrayed as old and removed from reality in the digital age, and those who still revere it as a medium of imagery have also been frozen in time, haunted by ghosts of the past.