Fright fest in 4bia
Jocelyn Lee
The Straits Times
Publication Date: 20-08-2008



Directors (from left) Parkpoom Wongpoom, Banjong Pisanthanakun, Yongyoot Thongkongtoon and Paween Purijitpanya.


Thai director Parkpoom Wongpoom was on a plane to Singapore last year when he came up with the idea for a new horror story.
The co-director of the successful horror hits Shutter (2004) and Alone (2007) said: "On the plane, I got the idea of doing a scary movie about an air stewardess flying solo with a dead body."
Knowing that the idea was too short for a full-length feature, he approached three other directors from Thai production company GMM Tai Hub to contribute 30-minute films to the project.
The result is the horror anthology 4bia.
Banjong Pisanthanakun, the other co-director of Shutter and Alone, offered a story about four teenagers who get into an accident while river rafting; Yongyoot Thongkongtoon, who produced the hit comedy The Iron Ladies (2000), came up with a story of a girl exchanging text messages with an unknown 'friend', while Paween Purijitpanya, director of horror movie Body (2007), told the story of a group of youths who stumble on a curse.
The directors, who were in town last Thursday to promote the movie, said via a translator they were aware that audiences were getting tired of Asian horror.
Banjong said: "The horror craze is starting to see a decline, especially when there are so many horror movies now, some of which are good and some are not."
But he added: "There will always be horror movie fans. As long as we have a good script and a good concept, the movie will definitely be successful."
4bia seems to be bucking the trend of declining receipts for Asian horror. The US$1.5-million movie, which took just 24 days to shoot, was the top-grossing film in Thailand when it was released in April, beating Hollywood flicks such as Iron Man and Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull.
4bia earned 90 million baht ($2.63 million) compared to Iron Man's 72 million baht ($2.10 million) and Indiana Jones' 65 million baht ($1.90 million).
The healthy box office proved that strong concepts are very important in drawing audiences, said Yongyoot, especially since horror anthologies had not done well in Thailand in the past.
He explained: "Such movies did not do well because the directors were all trying to outdo one another in terms of whose short film was scarier and the final product had no unifying theme.
"However, there is no competition among us. We ensured that the four short films were linked to one another in subtle ways, making the movie complete."
Banjong added that this was a great challenge for them: "We had to make the four short films stand out from one another yet ensure that they are still linked. That's the hard part."
The directors are hoping that Singapore fans will take to this creepshow as much as the Thai audiences have.
Yongyoot said: "Even though 4bia is a Thai horror movie, we hope that it will appeal to everyone. Essentially, it is a movie that features four short horror flicks put together by four talented directors."