Tweet
Released by: Vicious Circle Films
Released on: 8/30/2011
Director: Ekachai Uekrongtham
Cast: Karen Mok, Ananda Evering
Year: 2008
Purchase From Amazon
The Movie:
Directed by Ekachai Uekrongtham (the same man who directed the bizarre but critically acclaimed Beautiful Boxer) in 2008, The Coffin is supposedly based on a 'true Thai ritual' and was, according to the film's domestic press release, a box office hit which break records for the highest grossing Thai film of all time when it was originally released.
The story follows a couple, Su (Karen Mok) and Chris (Ananda Evering), two complete strangers who find each other through some unusual circumstances. When Su is told she is in the advances stages of terminal cancer only a few days before she is to be married, Chris' girlfriend mysteriously falls into a coma and the doctors' are unable to revive her. On their own, they each learn of that aforementioned ritual which involves a living person laying down in an actual coffin in order to reverse the unfortunate karmic circumstances that have put their respective loved ones in the bad spots they're in. The pair decide to hold a 'funeral for the living' and wouldn't you know it, Su's cancer goes into remission and Chris' girlfriend wakes up as if there was never anything wrong with her at all.
Things seem to be going great for everyone until, not so surprisingly given that this is a horror movie after all, their luck runs out. Judging by the fact that some bizarre supernatural shenanigans are starting to follow Su and Chris around, it seems like they did something incorrect in their ritual and now they've upset the spiritual balance of things in a bad way. Though they've evidently exorcised their own selves of bad luck, it seems that they've passed it on to the people around them.
Mok and Evering, both top billed here, really only share minimal screen time together so they don't quite play off of one another the way that you might think they would given that they are very definitely the two main stars in this film. Individually, their performances aren't bad, though Mok isn't given as much to work with as Evering is, possibly because he worked with the director a year earlier on 2007's Pleasure Factory. Unfortunately, while the two leads are fine Ekachai Uekrongtham makes some poor decisions that hurt the pacing of the film and periodically make you wonder if he's not fallen in love with his own style (almost everything is shot with a blue tint that's cool at first but soon seems a little 'much'). The dialogue often times comes across as forced and melodramatic, and while it's delivered with enough feeling and emotion that it's doesn't drag things down too much, it doesn't do the movie any favors.
Thankfully, not all is lost and in fact The Coffin winds up a reasonably entertaining horror film. Without wanting to head too far into spoiler territory, there are two key scenes here that will take you by surprise and stick with you. The film builds very slowly and it loses a bit of control at the end, but there are enough spooky moments and enough atmospheric set pieces that it's worth a look - so long as you're okay with the mellow dramatic dialogue and very erratic, often times slow, pacing of the film.
Video/Audio/Extras:
The Coffin looks decent enough in this 1.78.1 anamorphic widescreen presentation. There are some compression artifacts that you'll notice in the darker scenes and the whole thing has a heavy blue tint to it but that later note is obviously a stylistic choice on the part of the filmmakers. This is a very dark looking movie and this transfer reflects that.
Audio chores are handled by a Thai language Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo track with forced English subtitles in white which are easy enough to read and don't contain any obvious typos. No problems with the audio quality here, the levels are well balanced and some of the stings used in an attempt to generate some jump scares work fairly well.
Extras include a twenty minute behind the scenes featurette which gives us a very interesting look at the actual locations used for a few of the key scenes in the film and how the filmmakers went about setting up to work on those locations. There's some B-roll footage in here too and a lot of emphasis on the set design and prop design that went into making this film. There are also ten minutes worth of interviews here with Aki Shibuya, Andrew Lin and Karen Mok who talk about their characters, what they liked about the roles in the movie and what it was like working on this picture. Twenty four minutes of deleted footage is also found here, presented in semi-rough condition with time code over top.
Aside from that, look for a trailer for the feature, trailers for a few other Breaking Glass releases, a still gallery, menus and chapter stops.
The Final Word:
The Coffin is an interesting and fairly well made foreign horror film with some stand out set pieces and decent atmosphere and Breaking Glass has done a solid job on the film's North American DVD release.
