THE CLOSET. (2005) FINAL CUT ASIA ENTERTAINMENT. DIRECTED BY TERAKORN RANGSIWONG. STARRING WATTANA KOOMKRONG, NUTAPORN PARKPLEN, DARAN TANTIWICHITVET, MONTANEE TINTISUK, PRIN WIKARN AND BLE PISET. REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©
There's no such thing as a free lunch. That's an old saying with which you might be familiar. There's a price to be paid for everything. Neither, it would appear, is there any such thing as free money, as the family in this excellent Thai horror film find out to their cost.
The family are absolutely lovely. Suda is a good wife and mother and takes great care of her smiley husband and her cute little toddler son, Dam. The three of them move into a rented house that's apparently a big step up from what they're used to. They're thrilled to bits with the move and spend lots of time getting acquainted with their spacious new surroundings.
I love the house. It's big and a tad spooky with shiny polished floors and it's filled with old-fashioned wooden furniture, like the titular closet. Isn't titular a funny word? It sounds like tits, haha. We're being very immature today, aren't we? Anyway, the titular closet is really something. Something quite special, in fact. It's the kind of closet we could all use in our daily lives. It's a money closet, see?
That's right, folks. Every time Suda goes to the empty closet (it's more of what we'd call a wardrobe, really, than a closet), she finds a brown envelope stuffed with cash in it. This happens numerous times over the course of the film. So many times, in fact, that Suda grows impatient and snappy with her adorable little boy whenever she thinks the money is delayed or missing. It brings out a nasty, greedy side to her she's clearly never exhibited before.
The couple are surprisingly accepting of their unexplained good fortune. There's an hilarious montage of them spending their ill-gotten gains on various fancy household appliances. They clearly don't feel that they'll ever be called to account over the cash that suddenly started to appear in their house without warning. It's a bit like when the ATM's accidentally start spewing out tons of extra cash to people and people are thrilled but then the banks make you pay the money back, which totally sucks, haha.
Any-hoo, we're aware that there's a ghostly presence in their house and, in particular, in the titular closet. (Tee-hee, it still sounds like tits!) When little Dam goes missing one day and the old lady next door tells Suda and her hubby the disturbing history of their lovely new home, it becomes all too clear what the cost of blindly accepting all the free money is going to be.
Needless to say, it's a price that the distraught couple never in a million years thought they'd have to pay. But you gotta pay the piper, don't you? You've gotta render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's and all that jazz. Everything has a price. They'll have to learn that the hard way, sadly. So, were the blenders and food processors (are those the same thing?) and washing machines and fancy new clobber worth it in the end? You'll see for yourself if you watch the movie, folks.
This is a terrific story, simply told. I enjoyed every second of it. There was a cheap, home-made, even grainy look to this film which makes me think that the budget for it was low enough, but this only added to the film's charm rather than distracted from it. I love cheaply-made but effective horror stories. At just over an hour long, it reminded me of something that might be part of a series of horror shorts or something.
There's a simple but haunting piano score to go with it as well. While it was playing over and over in the film, I swore I'd never forget it. Now, of course, it's gone from my head forever which is the way of these things. If I had a quid for every time that happened, I'd have quite a few quid to play around with.
So many 'quids,' in fact, that I could possibly afford to ignore my wardrobe if it suddenly started leaving me brown envelopes stuffed with cash. I don't think I would ignore it, though. The lure of all that 'free' money would be irresistible, I fear. I don't think my wardrobe likes me in that way, however. The only thing it's ever given me are splinters. Ah well. At least they're honestly come by.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA HARRIS.
Sandra Harris is a Dublin-based novelist, film blogger and movie reviewer. She has studied Creative Writing and Film-Making. She has published a number of e-books on the following topics: horror film reviews, multi-genre film reviews, womens' fiction, erotic fiction, erotic horror fiction and erotic poetry. Several new books are currently in the pipeline. You can browse or buy any of Sandra's books by following the link below straight to her Amazon Author Page:
http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B015GDE5RO
You can contact Sandra at:
http://sandrafirstruleoffilmclubharris.wordpress.com
No comments:
Post a Comment