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Ghost Mother
Tai Seng // Unrated // October 28, 2008
List Price: $14.95 [Buy now and save at Amazon]
The Film:
After Shutter put Thailand's horror sect on the chopping block for everyone to gawk at, a closer eye has been kept on some of its other spook-out productions like Bangkok Haunted and Ghost of Mae Nak. There's just one problem: none of the rest of them are nearly as tightly-crafted, or scary for that matter. Ghost Mother carries on that tradition; it's like a bitter, watery cocktail that mixes a little Ghost Dad and Kill Bill in with the revenge-seeking supernatural storyline that we've all grown to digest and re-digest over and over. But there are three big problems with Ghost Mother: it's a boring, visually banal wreck, and it's about as scary as a cornered kitten.
Following a fatal undercover accident, Nuntha is forced to care for her two nieces and nephew when their father dies from gang-related activity. Together, they run a fried dough stand in the market side of town as they build something close to a mother-children relationship between them. Under suspicion from the gang, Nuntha also becomes a target for their violence and is brutally murdered on a stormy evening. To protect the children, she somehow comes back from the dead, returns home, and conducts herself as she normally would -- only she leaves the oldest of the children to run the dough cart. During this time, she makes it her mission to take care of each gang member before they turn their attention to the rest of the family.
From there, Ghost Mother splits into two separate plots: one geared towards the weakening family structure, and the other on an officer struggling to catch the gang members. It plays with a few different genres along the way, namely with the more active revenge-styled drama with a dash of cat-and-mouse horror. For the most part, there's way too much brash movement to create any fear in dark corners -- one of the big weapons that Asian ghost stories exploit to their full benefit. With this somewhat kinetic motion comes an upbeat, rhythmic score that livens up all the wrong patches in the film. For instance, post-death Nuntha spends some time kneading dough for the little fried nuggets, which is an image followed directly by a droplet of blood that falls directly between her hands. Instead of emphasizing the eeriness of the product in a similar fashion to that of Fruit Chan's Dumplings, it leads to a longer patch of bubbly music as the dough shop's customers eat piece after piece. When the more brutal moments of the film pop up, there's an equally clumsy infusion of moods that builds up little more than a cloud of puzzlement.
Something else that doesn't really encourage Ghost Mother's efforts is the utter indistinct air about its actors. They find a dangerous middle ground in between mere adeptness and energy that causes them to slink into obscurity, making even Nuntha herself seem less than engaging. Starring enchanting actress Patcharapa, she's not given ample time or material to get her dramatic hands dirty. Her scenes as her spectral self get a little bit of the spooky mood going, but they're nothing that can really support the picture. Family is a big focal point in this style of films, particularly the character eccentricities themselves. With Hideo Nakata's J-horror work Dark Water, heavy emphasis was placed on the mother's struggles dealing with her divorce and her frail relationship with her young daughter. Likewise, Korea's A Tale of Two Sisters hinged greatly on the rapport between the three female characters -- and their equal distance from the father. Ghost Mother similarly seems to try to form this kind if dynamic between the Nuntha and the eldest niece, but there's no chemistry to speak of.
It's rare to find a film in the Asian horror genre that I'm ambivalent about, especially since most entries in the genre do at least something for me; from classics like Ugetsu to modern efforts like Thailand's own Shutter, there's always at one random nugget for take away from 'em. That's why Ghost Mother's blandness surprises me. I think it has something to do with the overindulgent action sequence -- which are hard to swallow in their own right, especially Nuntha's resilience in her murder scene -- and their capacity to chomp up the scant ambient tricks that it tries to instill. It might also stem from the frantic, jarring editing that never allows for expanding tension or character focus in the frame. Either way, it's safe to say that Ghost Mother musters up nary a scare, only pushing hard enough on genre lines to squirt a little blood and close up shop. This, trust me, doesn't deliver near enough of the goods to justify the drudge.
The DVD:
Tai Seng offers this bare-bones DVD version of Ghost Mother in a standard keepcase presentation featuring spooky artwork that can be a little misleading regarding the demeanor of the film.
Video and Audio:
Presented in a 1.78:1 image fit for 16x9 televisions, Ghost Mother can really only claim anamorphic enhancement to its list of visual positives. It's a bloody mess -- weak on detail, interlaced, and a rather sluggish when it comes to black levels and shading. Thankfully, the scenes that do involve bright saturation of color handle them well, such as the blistering reds incorporated with blood at scant point. In all, this disc looks pretty darn rough.
Thankfully, the Thai 5.1 audio treatment fairs better than the visual. Strangely, Ghost Mother is a fairly active-sounding film, though it's not in the atmospheric ways that its cousins have mastered. Instead, it pours through a lot of upbeat, highly-rhythmic tracks through its musical accompaniment, which sound fine. Verbal clarity didn't seem to bad either, while a few hints of surround sound capabilities could be picked out. It's a fine audio treatment that helps to improve the film's experience ever so slightly. English subtitles are available -- fine ones with only a burp or two in the verbose -- along with Chinese subtitles to accompany the Thai track.
Final Thoughts:
Ghost Mother tries to skate along on minimal fright to convey its family-based horror story, much in the vein of far more successful Japanese supernatural dramas; in turn, it unsuccessfully jazzes up the production with non horror-based elements like quick-paced mob chases and rapid, nausea-inducing editing. End result? It's an odd mish-mash of weak attempts to create something something unique, kind of like masking the flavor of beef by drenching it with too much seasoning. In that, it's an unsatisfying blend that proves you can make a humdrum picture using way too many elements. It's got one or two solid spectre-based scare elements hidden inside its loud demeanor, but there's way too many other weakly executed material crammed in to justify doing anything else but Skip It and go after something along the lines of the Kadokawa Horror Collection if you're in need of something different in the spooky Asian ghost horror genre.
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