The Coffin (2008)

I'm probably just showing my cultural ignorance, but I had never heard of Thai coffin ceremonies before watching this film. Apparently, if you are suffering from bad fortune, a way to get rid of it is letting yourself be locked into a fresh coffin while monks pray outside.

The Coffin concerns itself with two participants in one such ceremony, Chris (Ananda Everingham) and Sue (Karen Mok).

Chris wants nothing more than the awakening of his girlfriend Mariko (Aki Shibuya) from a coma, while Sue does not want to die of her terminal lung cancer, especially this close to her wedding. Both of them get what they ask for, but of course there is a price to pay for everything, as the Karma Preservation Theorem posits.

Chris and the newly conscious Mariko are soon beset by bloody visions of a woman and a baby who do not seem to have anything good in mind.

Sue is even worse off: her fiancee dies in an accident, but finds still time in his busy afterlife schedule (I heard the beaurocratic hoops the newly dead have to jump through are terrible) to haunt her.

By different means, Chris and Sue learn of the risk that is part of the coffin ceremony - bad fortune does not dissolve into thin air, but is instead put upon your loved ones, who usually aren't all that keen on their new state of lifelessness.

 

After the first half of The Coffin, I was quite convinced of having a new Asian horror sensation of the clever sort to rave about. Alas, its final third undercuts much of its effect, not so much as to make it unwatchable, but more than enough to keep it from being a mandatory film for people interested in Thai horror cinema.

It's all director Ekachai Uekrongtham's fault, really. The film is a mood piece most of the time, the kind of film that lives (or dies) from the director's ability to make ideas palpable as part of its atmosphere. Uekrongtham succeeds all the way through. Ironically, this is the film's problem. It starts out with an ominous mood, slowly rises to moments that feel (to this viewer) exactly like the point between sleeping and waking, that moment when you feel as if someone you lost was right beside you, then fills this moment with as much dread as love and loss. Talking about grief by way of the supernatural may not be all that original, but it works perfectly here. Until Uekrongtham ends the movie with kitschy melodramatics - as if there was no difference between accepting things one can't change and saying thanks for being kicked.

The Coffin's aesthetics make it clear that this was a conscious decision, based on something the director truly believes, and not an inability to convey what he wants to convey. Unfortunately, this doesn't help me relish it more. I'm not sure how much my irritation with the later parts of the movie is based on the philosophical differences between Uekrongtham and me; what I do know is that I felt somewhat cheated or lied to by its ending.

There are a lot of good things to find here too. First and foremost, Uekrongtham knows how to frame and film scenes as effectively as possible. He shows the kind of technical competence bordering on genius one does not often find, paired with the ability to be content with doing what's best for a scene and not what looks most flashy.

Some of the horror effects are a little unsubtle, but used in a context that makes it difficult not to feel uncomfortable while experiencing them.

The acting is solid enough, even if a little more intensity (not to be mistaken for Tom-Cruisy teeth-grinding) would probably have been more fitting for the film's themes of loss and guilt.

It's as problematic for me to recommend the film as it is not to recommend it. People interested in partly brilliant, partly annoying movies would be a perfect fit for The Coffin. Or people with a much more laid back view of life and death than I possess.

 

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