Sunday, December 13, 2009

Scared (2005)

I'm not sure what to write about Scared, but it's an entertaining piece of thai-cinema with a paper-thin script, all young actors look the same and easily to understand even without subtitles. A school class is celebrating end of school (I guess... maybe it's just summer vacation or something), so they're going out on a bus trip. After crashing with the bus - and the driver gets his face impaled by a big piece of wood - they try to get back to civilization. But something or someone don't want them to leave the countryside, and one by one they died en bizarre and bloody accidents or get hunted down by a very violent killer!

The story isn't much more than that, but except the silly ending, this is a fun and competent splatter movie with a decent budget and actors more cute than good. This project must have been planned to be a summer blockbuster and create poster-stars of most of the cast. I'm not sure that happen, I'm not even sure it became a big success, but still - I like it a lot and I'm surprised that it's not out DVD in the US or Europe. Shot on HD it looks very good without probably costing to much to produce. The actors are all around their twenties and are there to get killed and nothing more. And look cute I guess.

What makes this movie extra special is the generous amount of gore. Most of the killings is very graphic. I think that at least five or six of the victims have their heads impaled, crushed or something else. The head, or at least the top of the head, is sacred in Thailand so I think this makes it even more powerful. But then we have a lot of other nasty killings and the body count is very, very high. But all this is made with a tongue-in-cheek approach and even if I don't understand everything, I realize that the beginning of the movie is a parody of asian ghost-movies. Which is quite funny.

But the big problem is the ending. It's not that bad (like everything is a dream or something stupid like that) and it's possible to accept, but it's also a cheap way to end a very advanced set-up. It's been done before and I hope it will never happen again. But don't that scare you, this is a gory and over-the-top splatter movie which makes the last Final Destination to look like a piece of... crap.

2 comments:

Jocke Andersson said...

It's never dull, but that ending is so fucking awful that it almost ruins the entire movie. As you say, its so damn cheap.

Unknown said...

There is a German DVD-Release, if you are interested. Uncut, but except the Thai-Sound it has just German Subtitles and Dubbing.
http://www.ofdb.de/view.php?page=fassung&fid=90218&vid=180298