Thai horror movies are known for their violence, gore, scale, and sharpness.
At the beginning of the 21st century, films such as "Ghost Shadow", "The Crossroads of The Grim Reaper", "The Ghost Will Be Screened", "The Art of the Devil", "Ghost Dormitory", "Baby Corpse" and other films have swept the world, and have also been borrowed from Hollywood and Korean movies.
However, with the routine and modeling, there have been few masterpieces in recent years, but the rise of Korean horror films has a great tendency to catch up.
In the face of this situation, Thai filmmakers can no longer work hard. Fortunately, the scale of Thai movies is loose, and any subject matter can be filmed, as long as it draws on the successful methods of world horror films, it can also play with local characteristics.
In July this year, there was a Thai horror film on Netflix, directed by newcomer director Lee Tong Kang, with the title "Ghost Maid", which tells a story of a rich ghost.
The first half of the film takes the route of supernatural horror, and the second half turns sharply to bloody violence, and the mixture of two different styles is very creative.
The 103-minute film is divided into 3 acts, first telling the story of the haunted giants, then revealing the truth of the ghost, and finally showing the maid's revenge, as the story unfolds step by step, the audience also suddenly realizes - the darkness of human nature, the gap between rich and poor, and the crisis of society are the realistic thinking that the film brings to the audience behind the horror story.
One
The story of the film takes place in a palatial villa on the outskirts of the city. Neela and Uma are a successful couple with a talented woman, Uma's father is a government official, and Nila relies on her father-in-law's influence to have a smooth business.
They also have a lovely daughter, Ned, who is the envy of the world.
Nila has three servants in her family, Uncle Chai, the driver in charge of driving and heavy work, Abang who is responsible for cooking, and Wan Jie, the housekeeper. The fly in the ointment was that they also lacked a maid who could run the housework, take care of Miss Ned.
The Neelas were not without a look, but every new maid approached Miss Ned, and a supernatural phenomenon occurred. Miss Ned would talk into the air, and her two favorite monkey toys would often run around the house.
So every new maid was scared off after a while, and the position remained vacant until maid Joey arrived.
Joey was warned by WanJie not to be curious in this home, not to ask questions about things he did not want to do with his work, and not to run around the house.
But Joey didn't seem to take Wan Jie's words to heart, and she began to secretly look for clues about female ghosts in the villa, and soon found the clues.
It turns out that the female ghost is related to a maid named Baoyi who disappeared in the villa, who was the personal maid responsible for taking care of the life of the Nila couple, but disappeared after Miss Ned was born.
Joey asked the servants in the villa about Baoyi, and found that Wan Jie was tight-lipped about it, and Ah Bang was also spitting, only Uncle Chai was willing to say two more words.
From Uncle Chai's mouth, Joey learns that the relationship between Nila and Uma is not as harmonious as it seems. Nila is often absent from home and has cold feelings for Uma.
Uma is bisexual, and when Nila is not at home, in order to relieve the loneliness of being alone in the empty boudoir, she gradually becomes with the maid Baoyi, and the relationship between the two becomes like glue, going in and out together, just like two sisters.
Uma was also very sad after Baoyi's disappearance and still thinks about her.
Joey wants to continue to inquire about Baoyi's whereabouts, but Uncle Chai wants to stop talking, obviously there is something important to hide.
And Joey's interest in Poy's affairs was soon known to the hostess Uma, but she was not too angry, but coldly said that Poy was no longer here.
Two
The film quickly reveals joey and poy's relationship, which turns out to be two sisters who grew up together.
Boy and Joey were once inseparable, but due to the poor family, Boy had to leave the house to work and moved to Nila's house. In order to change his fate of poverty, Poi gradually lost himself and was with Uma.
Uma is actually unable to have children, but Neela wants children very much, but because she needs to rely on the power of the Uma family, she does not dare to have an affair. When Poy learns of this, she goes to seduce Nila and soon has a daughter, Ned, with whom she and Neila.
This incident was undoubtedly a betrayal for Uma, but after all, the family had children, and the three of them were at peace for the time being.
Bad luck suddenly fell on Poy, who once accidentally slipped in the toilet and was seriously injured while giving Ned a bath. Uma and Neela saw her one after another, but instead of rescuing her, they ordered their servants to carry Poi into the garden and bury her alive.
Poi died with resentment and has since become a ghost in the family.
When she grew up, Joey also came to the city to work like her sister, and in order to find out the whereabouts of Poy, she also chose to be a maid, and went to Nila's villa.
Unlike Poy, Joey has a mental illness and has been seeing a psychologist for two years. And she was cruel by nature, having killed two foreign employers.
Joey learns the truth about Boyy's death through contact with The Spirit of Boy, and she knows that everyone in the villa is inseparable, and she wants to hunt them all down.
On Uma's birthday, Nira hosts a birthday party for her, where friends and family are invited to the villa to celebrate, and Joy embarks on her own plans for revenge.
Joey drugged the drinks at the banquet, rendering everyone present powerless to resist that night, and then she put on her raincoat and rushed into the crowd with her pre-prepared knife. All the guests attending the banquet became ghosts under the knife, and Uncle Chai, Wan Jie and Abang's three servants were also killed by her.
When nila and Uma were killed, they were able to resist, but at this time, Poy's ghost came out to shock both of them, and finally died under Joey's knife.
After killing everyone, Joey set fire to the villa's garden and left the sad place with her sister's daughter Ned.
Three
Actress Ploi Sonalin, born in 2001, is only 19 years old but has been acting for 5 years, and won the Best Supporting Actress Award at the Golden Swan Awards for Thai Cinema in 2018 for her performance in Siam Square.
The maid Joey she plays is set up a bit like the witch Carrie, and all belong to the split personality that lurks until the end.
And Joey's revenge process is a bit like Wu Song in the "Blood Splash Mandarin Duck Building", which seems crazy and dehumanizing, and kills innocent people along with them. In fact, the purpose of this arrangement of the film is obviously to distinguish the Nilas and the two sisters Of Boy and Joy into two opposing classes based on the gap between rich and poor.
Both Boy and Joey are poor people living at the bottom of society, and after coming to Nila's villa to become a maid, Poy tries every means to change his fate and get close to Nila. She first became Uma's lover and then gave birth to a daughter for Nila, fantasizing about becoming a member of the family.
But in the eyes of the Nilas, Poy was always just their maid. Even though Uma once had feelings for Boyi, when her position in the family was threatened, she did not hesitate to choose to destroy Boy, and Nila only used Boyi as a tool for procreation, and had no feelings for her, so Boy was buried alive by them.
Joey's revenge is a bit like the plot of Kim Ki-taek, played by Uncle Cake in the Korean movie "Parasite", killing his employer, President Park. In addition to the purpose of revenge for her sister, she also carries the hatred of one class to another, so she will be so determined.
The director deliberately had all the guests in the banquet dressed in white dresses, while the hostessEs Nila and Uma wore solemn black suits and bright red long skirts; and Joey, as a maid, wore short blue dresses representing the servants. Joey once said that she was also envious of people who could wear white dresses, which was her motivation to kill everyone.
This figurative class antagonism is hidden under the shell of the horror film, and the director wants to express the social dimension of thinking. Works such as "The Invisible Man", "Hunger Station" and "Hunting" launched this year also deal with such themes, which may also be a signal.
Four
Director Lee Tong Kang is still a newcomer, having only directed a horror film called Monster Lake in 2019, and Ghost Maid is his second work.
What fans have commented most about is the film's new attempt to combine the two styles of supernatural and thriller, and the transition in the plot is very natural and does not appear abrupt.
Although the sister Baoyi only appears in the flashback fragments, the character's mental mechanism is still accurately expressed; the younger sister Joey is a split personality, on the surface is a cute little girl, in fact, hidden in the genes of madness and violence, the shaping of this character is like peeling the onion skin layer by layer, the process is very delicate.
The image of Neela and Uma is not portrayed as a villain, and their motivation to bury Baoyi alive is actually well interpreted, although cruel, it makes some viewers feel "excusable", after all, Baoyi is also a "green tea" that betrays feelings.
Therefore, although the movie is not currently rated high on Douban, it still has a lot of merit.
In general, Brother Eggplant believes that "Ghost Maid" is a horror movie that has been made very well in Thailand in recent years, which is very suitable for watching at night for netizens to pass the time.
(Rotten Tomatoes Movie Editorial Department: Blood Dan Heart)