Clearly aimed at the teenage Scream crowd and possessing extremely high production values, this easily outclasses most recent Hong Kong horror product, and it is not hard to see why this was such a big hit in its country of origin.

Set in 1960, Fear Faith Revenge tells the story of five young students freshly enrolled at Thailand's prestigious St. George Academy for boys. Chaidan, Ghusolsarng, Pongkhet, Shinsamut and Traisoon find themselves assigned to share a room. Chaidan is the narrator of the film's early scenes and the group's natural leader, a poor kid very much out of place amongst his affluent fellow students. Traisoon is tough talking but soft-hearted under his abrasive exterior, and the sensitive Shinsamut is the group's natural victim. The boys become firm friends after a bonding incident in the communal shower involving an altercation with some senior boys out to cause trouble. A real air of Homo-eroticism pervades this film, with its stunning looking and almost exclusively male cast, and it is nowhere more in evidence than in this scene.

The boys see a photograph in the school's Hall of Fame of a former student named Prince Daovadueng Sira. The boys are intrigued by the handsome Prince, especially when they discover that he committed suicide in 1952. They resolve to find out more about him and six other students who are also inexplicably missing from the 1952 school register. A girl called Numkang, the daughter of a teacher at the school, has a crush on the Prince and decides to help them, but their investigation meets with a conspiracy of silence and misinformation.

To get to the truth, the group holds a seance in the Hall of Fame and contacts the Prince using an Ouija board. Following a little light hearted banter and some flirting with Numkang, the Prince reveals that he was murdered.

The seance awakens dark forces at the school and disturbing incidents begin to occur as a result. A pet cat is found savagely mutilated. The taps in Numkang's room run red with blood. Traisoon is allowed to fall to his death by an unseen assailant while trying to re-enter the school one night after an illicit visit to Numkang. A bully is electrocuted in the shower. The boys are confined to school and forbidden to walk around alone, but they sneak out to hold another seance. More murders occur and the isolated school is cut off from help by a storm that has taken out the phone lines and made the roads impassable. The boys are caught returning to their room after their illicit session with the Ouija board and are immediately suspected of being responsible for the killings. Meanwhile the murders continue and Numkang goes missing. The solution to the mystery is revealed in a series of strikingly shot black-and-white flashbacks to 1952, the year of Prince Daovadueng's murder, that echo the tragedy at Columbine. The truth about what happened to the Prince and the other six dead students at last comes to light, all of which leads to a confrontation with a supernatural foe that only assistance from beyond the grave can help the boys overcome.

Fear Faith Revenge is an excellent film in all departments. Story, acting, direction and cinematography are all first class and the high production values give the film a gloss to rival anything out of the West. The film does not shy away from the depiction of violence, and it certainly has its share of gory moments, notably a graphic throat slashing straight out of a Friday the Thirteenth movie.

The film in some ways resembles The Dead Poets Society with its private school setting and re-creation of the past by new students, and like that film stands and falls on the strength of the performers involved. The young cast do not disappoint and performances are outstanding throughout.

This film should especially appeal to teenage audiences but provides an enjoyable excursion into the supernatural regardless of the age of the viewer.

The one disappointing thing about Fear Faith Revenge is that it so resembles a Hollywood movie that there is little room in the film for any element of local interest, such as the utilization of traditional Thai supernatural folklore in working out the mystery, the inclusion of which is often such an endearing feature of Hong Kong ghost films. This one quibble aside, this is a film I heartily recommend to those in search of stylish thrills. On the strength of this outing director Somching Srisupap is definitely a name to watch in the future.