16/35
Overall, there’s a lot to love here
Line of Events
Soriya returns to Cambodia to find herself after her mother’s death, where she finds a family she never knew and an old building full of dark secrets. After her mother dies, a Japanese-Cambodian manga artist and her boyfriend decide to travel to Cambodia to learn more about her past, but when she encounters strange events in the building that suggest something darker is happening to the residents, she must put an end to it before it spreads. One of the stronger features is the genuinely enjoyable and engaging setting, which features a number of interconnected parts that work well together.
It creates a fantastic sense of impending dread the longer the two stay in the community, with the increasing danger leading to greater excitement
Starting with the backstory of her mother dying under mysterious circumstances while living in a community she’s long estranged from, it provides a way to establish the motive for her return, as well as give us a good sense of their mutual history. Given the relationship depicted and how it affects her, the desire to reconnect with everyone once she’s able to discover the reason is a natural part of their reunion. It also makes the presence of the community’s behaviors and rituals seem like a perfect fit to enhance this type of story, starting out as odd customs before gradually becoming darker and more sinister.
This setup helps make the film much more enjoyable as the sinister instincts begin to take hold
With a restrained nature revolving around the good-natured, if slightly odd, behavior of the community or simply noticing the ritualistic decorations left behind, it’s nice enough to serve the film well until the more overt sequences later when she’s left alone in the apartment. The big sequence takes the form of a bizarre meal prep with family members gathered and others she’s met in the community performing what seems like a ritual ceremony designed to prepare her for a special occult ritual that quickly turns into a nightmare of a fever dream that she can’t tell from reality, which is quite impressive. She kicks off the rest of this in a much darker genre-bending effort that includes a few revelations regarding the visions she’s been experiencing, leading to a wild finale that reveals the dark origins of the ceremony, as it involves the introduction of a new spirit into the body of a host, which is again more subdued than expected but still manages to deliver with its generally creepy visuals and chases around the complex.
One of the main factors is the sense of confusion present here, as very little is explained
There’s a lot to like about it all, because while there aren’t too many flaws here, there are a few issues that arise. Since the first half was much more sinister and restrained than anything else, there’s not much way to find out what’s going on, preferring to stay focused on the haunting atmosphere of the building, as well as their sinister behavior, to evoke fear almost exclusively. As a result, almost nothing is revealed about what the community is trying to do, what their ritual involves, or how anything is supposed to be done, so very little is resolved.
Rated Unrated/R: Violence and vulgarity
It’s not until the end that things really come together, so it can be a bit confusing at first to get into what’s going on. Another downside is that this setup makes for a fairly slow first half, with very little happening other than setting up the plot, which is completed at the end, so it takes a while to get there. Here are some of the minor flaws evident in this case.