Well, another pile of stuff has arrived in my mailbox, among these a whole new bunch of Thai horror films, including 2006′s “Scared”….Will director Pakpoom Wongjinda follow through on it’s title? Let’s find out…..

First the bad news. The Thai DVD has no English subtitles. There are extras, a trailer and a brief behind-the-scenes segment but that’s all. The image is 16:9 anamorphic, the audio is a clear 5.1 dolby mix, and, as always, official Thai DVDs are very reasonably priced. The film has also made it to DVD in Germany and Malaysia as well, but again with no English subtitles. Thank goodness your lil’ Catgirl had some subs I could work with and do a bit o’ translation on and a desire to take a stab at it.

Was all that worth my limited time and effort? Or is this goofy Catgirl just certifiably crazy? There’s really only one sure way to find out…. You’ll just have to “Read On”… silly.

Well… the basic plot for this one is pretty easy to grasp and will be no stranger to anybody who watched the teen slasher films of the late 70′s and 80′s.

The synopsis reads as follows: “During the orientation of a university, seniors manage a trip to a forest for first year students. But when they arrive at the checkpoint in the front of the forest, an officer does not allow them to enter because of the danger that may happen.
One of the seniors, insists to enter the forest. Unexpectedly, a stranger named Mork come to the group and asks for the ride to enter the forest. He claims that he knows the shortcut and is willing to guide the way.
On the way, one of the seniors, see a spirit shrine and tell everyone to get off the bus and show respect. But Note think that it is a waste of time and tell the driver to go on. After that, the group come to an old wooden bridge. Note tell the driver to cross the bridge although his friends warn that it may collapse. At the middle of the bridge, the accident happens : the bridge collapses and the whole bus drown into the river. The driver and some of the students die here.
Mai, Pat, Ploy, Peemai, Toey, Mew, Obor, Tan, Pok, Kenta, Air, Note, Pai, John, Bomb and Om are the survivors. They walk through the forest and find a deserted town. At this mysterious place, horror things happen. The students are killed cruelly one by one. Nobody knows who did all this, ghosts or murderers.”.

OK…. got that? Now you can tell this one is gonna get messy, there are just toooo many students on a bus to not have a huge body count in a movie like this. Surprisingly though, there is a lot less gore than one would imagine. The Thai censors go absolutely nuts over that sort of thing lately and “Scared” uses some very creative editing and camera angles to both heighten the suspense and still make you think you’ve seen lots more than you actually did…… .big thumbs up for that, it shows a real talent on the part of the filmmakers. I was expecting to see lots of the blurry mosaicking that has shown up on Thai DVD releases lately. Thankfully I can report that there was none. If anything, I found the students hard to distinguish from one another….. after a few minutes I found myself wishing for those ever so comforting stereotypes of the genre to help me…. You know… “Stupid Jock”, “Class Clown”, “Angsty Goth Girl”, “Smart Girl”, “Class Slut”, and so forth. All we get is “Asthma Girl”…. but that’s ok.

This one doesn’t break any new ground…. but at least it does what it’s supposed to. It’s a creepy lil’ piece of work that never explains itself, but still manages to catch you off guard once in a while… the ending itself is one of those, and is both original, and quite the scary bit of social commentary at the same time. Neko-chan gives this one 4 “Meows” out of 5….. but it needs a good subtitled release out of Hong Kong or Singapore for most of you to want to bother with it. (Self-Subbing is such a pain!!!)

And naturally…. Neko finds the Trailer for you to go all “Oooooh!” and “Aaahhh!” over…. Heehehe!!