Thai Theatrical Poster
This Thai box office hit features four short stories dealing with, yeah you guessed it, scary Asian ghost stories! The segments consist of:
“Happiness” – A lonely young woman strikes up a friendship with a guy through texting over her cellphone but those who wish for happiness should be careful what they wish for, there’s always somebody to oblige.
“Tit for Tat” – A cruel group of high school bullies pushes a young man too far and end up targets for a deadly game of black magic.
“In The Middle” – A few campers riding the rapids almost meet their doom when the boat they’re in capsizes, leaving a few concerned that a friend sleeping in the tent next to them may or may not have died in the water!
“Last Fright” – A royal dignitary’s mistress comes face to face with the dead body of her paramour’s wife. To make matters worse, she must ride in the same airplane cabin, alone, with the vengeful corpse!
4Bia, actually title PHOBIA, is a pretty predictable Asian horror anthology, I was mildly entertained but there were no surprises here; those well-versed in Asian horror will see most of the “shocking twists” coming from a mile away. Now that doesn’t necessarily mean the film is bad, it just means Thailand has the same problem we do…played-out predictability sells well in theaters. If this were to have been released in the U.S., it would have ended up going straight-to-DVD. This isn’t a bad flick, I actually enjoyed “Tit for Tat” and it’s stylish CG and the goofy horror comedy of “In The Middle” but nothing really jumped out at me as original or different. It’s all pretty average, a “been there, done this” experience indeed.
