Rating: C-
Dir: Htoo Paing Zaw Oo
Star: Nyein Thaw, Nang Tracy, Chan Min Ye Htut, Russell
a.k.a. Nya
I will admit that, after watching I teetered on the edge of not including this. I did subsequently find Midnight, which seemed a safer bet, and squarely in the horror genre, going by this synopsis. “When their bus breaks down in the middle of the forest, a group of friends accidentally end up in a haunted village.” Comparatively, this is… kinda horror. It’s more thrillery, and certainly very teen drama-ish. If you had to describe it, imagine something between Cruel Intentions and I Know What You Did Last Summer. The main lesson to take from it, is that Myanmar prisons must be terrible, because everyone here is very adamant about doing anything to avoid being sent to one.
However, before delving any deeper, let’s look in more detail at Myanmar, or The Country Previously Known As Burma. Not somewhere I know much about. I did see Luc Besson’s The Lady, starring Michelle Yeoh as beloved fighter for democracy and Nobel Peace Prize winner, Aung San Suu Kyi. Except awkwardly, once in power, she turned out to be a bit of a genocidal dictator herself. She’s back in jail now. Otherwise? I’m largely ignorant. I will say, I like the look of the Burmese language, which is super curvy, especially in contrast to the considerably more angular Roman alphabet. I mean, here’s a sentence: ရုပ်ရှင်ရုံများမှာ ပြန်လည်ရုံတင် ပြသသွားမယ့် “ည” နဲ့ “ဥပါယ်တံမျဉ်”. No clue what it means, but boy, does it look good.
It does seem to have a long history of cinema, the first film being documentary footage of the funeral of politician Tun Shein, all the way back in 1910. However, there looks to have been an equally long history of government intervention, oversight and censorship, especially if film-makers dared to broach political topics or depict the authorities unfavourably. It’s an uphill struggle: according to Wikipedia, as recently as 2016, there were only a dozen local movies approved by the censors that year and able to be screened, though numbers have increased since. These are almost entirely for local audiences. The IMDb contains just three dramatic features with Myanmar as their principal country, to have received 200 or more ratings. Night has managed just eighteen, with zero user or external reviews at time of writing.
Filter it down to horror, and things become more limited still, with nothing in the IMDb dating from below 2017, the year Night was made. I would have liked to include Journey to the Death as the selection here, being intrigued by this lovely IMDb synopsis: “The passengers who accidentally rides on the dark bus, are insanely being haunted by the clingy demons, by all means, and in final, the bus is automatically driven itself to where it wants to take them all.” Sadly, this horror-comedy sequel to Kyauk Kyauk Kyauk seems unavailable in full, though I did find a subtitled trailer for it, which looks every bit as bat-shit crazy as that synopsis. Going by other films, ghosts – particularly of the vengeful kind – are extremely common in Burmese horror cinema. As are bus rides, apparently.
Which is partly why I opted to include this one, despite the fringe qualifications – its genre is listed as a thriller only on the IMDb. Because Night bucks the above trend, instead being entirely non-supernatural, and containing no buses at all. The threat in this one is entirely human in nature – specifically, stemming from the less pleasant parts of human nature. I’ve certainly seen my fair share of Asian ghost stories over the decades. I probably now have more interest in entries that take a different approach, like we saw in this feature a few days ago with Vikalcharet, from a couple of countries over in Cambodia.
The main character are a group of friends who like praying cruel jokes. For example, on April Fools’ Day, one confesses his love for Tracy (Nang – every character has the same name as its actor) in front of the group; when she shyly reciprocates, he announces, “Just a prank, sis!” Hold my sides, I fear they may split. However, while Tracy may seem a naive patsy, she vows revenge, crafting an elaborate plan to that end. And, by elaborate, I mean “I’m unclear on most details.” It doesn’t help the only synopsis in English I could find, has lines such as, “One day, she break the photo album of his mother, Nat Shine Ko acridity to her,” and describes characters purely in terms like, “son of Moe Yathaw’s father’s 2nd wife.”
Basically, her scheme involves pitting two groups against each other: a couple who are being blackmailed, after having been surreptitiously video-taped making the beast with two backs, and the pranksters. This leads to the apparent death of one of the latter, which is also recorded and used as leverage against them. But there are other levels. The whole thing opens with a joke where one of them pretends to have been scared to death, in order to traumatize the target. Ok, that little jape is actually rather clever and well-executed, requiring some imagination and planning. However, it is definitely the sort of film which merits a running time of ninety minutes, tops. Not the two hours for which this actually lasts.
It doesn’t help that nobody is likeable. Tracy might come closest, and by the end, it’s clear she’s at least a fucking socio-, if not psychopath. The rest are largely interchangeable young people, all very photogenic, yet shallow, self-absorbed and not particularly interesting. In other words, just like most young people anywhere. I will say, this is technically more adept than I expected, with a solid enough grasp of framing, lighting and audio. However, competence can only take you so far when the plot is murky in its details, and it’s hard to give much of a damn about whether anyone involved lives or dies.
This review is part of our October 2024 feature, 31 More Countries of Horror.