A lonely girl with a broken leg. A group of bullies. Four guys on a white water rafting trip. An adulterous stewardess. These are the four stories that make up 4bia (Phobia). Brought to you by the directors of the original Shutter, Alone and Body #19, this Thai horror anthology has all the makings of a supreme horror classic.
After seeing Alone at last year’s Toronto After Dark, I realized what I already knew: American horror is practically dead. Unfortunately this movie only solidified this notion for me. The hokey, overused scare tactics of the ‘classic’ American horror movie have grown old and now we’ve turned to the other horror markets in the world and stolen from them. For your consideration I present The Grudge (originally Ju-On), Shutter (of the same name), Quarantine ([REC]) and, soon to be, Let the Right One In (presumably of the same name). I believe that I can say with reasonable certainty that they largely sucked (or will). But yet, here is what we’re missing. Slow, moody pieces that tell stories, rather than relying on a scare-a-minute. This is especially impressive considering that these are *shorts*.
Done in the style of an anthology (the last time this was done well in recent memory was the Twilight Zone movie in 1983) there are four seperate and distinct shorts, briefly outlined above. The first short is a girl who is housebound with a broken leg, the result of a car accident three months earlier who is having trouble finding work and paying her bills. When she begins 
receiving text messages from a mysterious stranger she befriends him, but there’s something strange. The second is about a group of bullies who torment and beat a young classmate for getting them expelled from school (which they probably deserved, but the expulsion was for possession of marijuana). Things begin to go badly when the boy appears to have been involved with voodoo. The third is a hilarious but scary tale of four friends who go white water rafting and have an accident. When one of their group – a man they previously believed to be dead – returns to camp and they begin to suspect that he might not be what he appears. The fourth and final story is that of a stewardess who is forced to fly alone with a princess (a real one, this is not a description), whose husband the stewardess is sleeping with. When the princess dies and the stewardess is again forced to fly alone with her, only this time with her body, strange things begin to happen to her… but is it real or is it her conscience?
As you can see all of these short films has the potential to be fantastic. They all hit precisely the right notes and compliment one another beautifully. I must say that my favorite was the one about the four guys camping, as it pokes fun at itself and the genre, while providing a great twist and some perfect scares.
I really can’t recommend this movie enough, but I’ll also take this time to recommend that when you see a trailer for a movie that turns out to be a remake of some foreign language movie you’ve never heard of, but can’t be bothered to see because you don’t like to read your movies, do yourself a favor: see the original. You’ll use those language skills they taught you in kindergarten and you’ll have the side benefit of being so scared you’ll never sleep again….
{ 1 trackback }
{ 0 comments… add one now }