Nang Nak won four awards at the 1999 Pan Asian Film Festival, including one for Best Picture. Kind of makes you wonder if the judges were blind and deaf? Okay, maybe not blind, but certainly deaf. Nang Nak is full of beautiful camera work, exotic locales, and lavish custom/set design. Kudos to some of the visual effects. Those dead people sure looked dead and Plastic Man's cameo was pretty impressive; but this is where the fun stops, folks.

Nang Nak really never goes anywhere. It's boring, drawn out and is never scary. It's 101 minutes long, but would have worked better as a short film. If you like Mark Dacascos lookalikes and Thai wenches with dykes haircuts then this Bud's for you.

My best advice: Skip Nang Nak and visit your favorite Thai Restaurant instead. Tell the hostess Miss Nak sent you, and maybe you'll get some free shit out of it. By the way, the story of Nang Nak is based on a well-known Thai legend (you know, like Big Foot, the Loch Ness Monster and The Bible).

COMMENTS
This is a winner of four awards at the Pan Asia Film Festival including Best Picture. This is also actually based on Thai urban legend, which supposedly happened back in the late 1800s. My mom, being Thai, told me that they taught her the legend back in school.

The legend is about a man who goes off to war and leaves his pregnant wife behind. While he was in war she gave birth, but had problems with the pregnancy and ended up losing her life along with the baby. Now supposedly her love for her husband was so great that even SHE wouldn't accept death, so when her husband finally returned home she made him believe that she and the baby were still alive, so seemingly everything was perfect.

After a while the husband notices the villagers acting funny around him and try to warn the husband that his wife is a ghost. He refuses to believe it and his wife ends up harming the villagers who tried to warn her husband. After a while he starts believing it and towards the end of the movie he is chased down by his wife and held up in a Temple, which is the same as a church.

Around that part of the movie we finally get to see the horror aspect of the film. The movie for the most part seemed to be somewhat of a love story, but towards the end we get to see the wife's true power. There were a couple creepy scenes in the end.

What I really liked about the movie was the story. I thought it was very good and it was interesting to see that in the movie they immediately stated the fact that the wife and baby were both ghosts in the beginning of the film, where as in most movies leave that for the "twist" ending. I guess there's no point in that since it's based on a legend anyway.

The acting was very well done and the directing was pretty good. They made the film look as though it was filmed in the 80s, when it was really only filmed in '99, so it was weird when I saw some good special effects in the movie. You tend to forget the actual age of the film.

This movie might be rather boring for some, but if you really pay attention to the love story behind it you'll really get into it and feel for the characters. Besides, it all pays off in towards the end anyway.

I would have given it a higher-rating, but I felt that, although it was a good movie, it didn't have enough stuff going on for me and I figured a 7-rating was best fitting. Still a good movie none-the-less. After watching the movie it proves that love really is stronger than death and if this stuff really happened then, geeze

Most likely the only way you'd be able to catch this film would be to purchase it online or catch it at a film festival. If you'd like to purchase it, you can do so by clicking here.

OVERALL
Good Thai horror film, with an excellent story. Don't bother looking for this unless you're really only seeing it for the story behind it and not the horror aspect, cuz then you'll end up disappointed.

Keeping that in mind, I enjoyed the movie a lot. It's a ghostly love story, generally unpredictable (since I don't know the legend) and absolutely drenched in atmosphere. The premise is simple: In the 1860's, husband Mak is forced to leave his faithful wife Nak, who is pregnant with their first child, to go to war. In the battle, he's badly wounded, and spends many months away in recovery. She ends up giving birth without him, and the movie shows the two are spiritually linked: As she moans and writhes through a difficult delivery, he similarly thrashes through a terrifying fever dream at the same time, miles away. Eventually, he's healed enough to travel, and goes back to his wife and child. It's here that the film takes its supernatural turn; if you know the legend, you know the twist, but since I don't imagine most people reading this will be familiar with it, I won't give it away. It's not that it's hard to figure out, but I don't like to spoil things if it's not necessary.

The film is very successful in building a growing sense of creepiness, mixed with a doomed romanticism. Mak and Nak are clearly meant for each other, but alas it is not to be. The strength of their relationship is sketched rather quickly at the beginning, obviously designed for an audience familiar with the story, but it still works. And then as things begin going wrong, the filmmakers are very subtle at first with their suggestive details (an overgrown riverbank, a weak staircase), building efficiently to thunderous storms and withered corpses. The scene of revelation midway through is truly hair-raising, and from that point on the film is a nail-biter, up until the very emotional finale.

I enjoyed the film for more than its absorbing story, as well. The cinematography is sumptuous, perfectly capturing the climate and geography of the beautiful setting. There's also a remarkable musical score, ranging from delicate vocals to pounding percussion, always appropriate for the mood. As a Western viewer, I appreciated the cultural window provided by the film, from the ubiquitous betel gum to the unique burial rituals employed by the villagers. It's also fun to see a different take on the ghost story, with new rules and expectations for a phantom's behavior.

There are certain elements of the movie that probably won't connect with a Western audience, but thankfully they're minor, and don't impact the film's effectiveness that badly. I got the sense that some of the animal symbolism was fairly specific, for example, and the influence of an important holy man clearly plays to Thai spiritual beliefs. The dialogue is occasionally minimalistic, which is usually good in a subtitled film, but I promise you'll get tired of the way Nak expresses regret by repeating Mak's name over and over well before the movie ends. The wrapup, too, with its voiceover explaining what happened to everybody, is probably much more satisfying to a Thai audience who has just enjoyed seeing a familiar legend played out than it is to Western viewers who don't connect with it on that level.

But aside from that, the movie works very well. It's very spooky, and occasionally quite frightening, its horror elements underlined with only brief flashes of extreme gore. The photography is excellent, the performers are gorgeous, and the emotional underpinnings are totally universal. Despite not knowing anything about the legend behind Nang Nak, I still found the film very accessible and quite enjoyable.