45/13
On the whole, there’s quite a lot to like here
Story
Soriya goes back to Cambodia in a quest to find herself after her mother’s death, there she finds a family she has never known and an old building full of dark secrets.. Following the death of her mother, a Japanese-Cambodian manga artist and her boyfriend decide to travel to Cambodia to find out more about her past, but when she’s confronted to strange events within the building that hint at something darker going on with the residents must stop it before it spreads. One of the stronger features is a truly enjoyable and immersive setup that features a lot of interconnecting parts that come together rather well.
That brings about a fantastic sense of looming dread the longer the two stay around the community with the increasing danger leading to more thrills
Starting with the background of her mother dying in mysterious circumstances while living in the community that she’s long since been estranged from, this provides the means of establishing the motive to return as well as giving enough of their background with each other. Since we’re aware of the relationship presented and how that affects her, the desire to reconnect with everyone once she arrives to figure out the cause is a natural part of their reunion. It also makes the presence of the community’s behavior and rituals seem like the perfect choice to enhance this type of story by appearing as quaint customs before gradually appearing darker and more ominous.
This setup helps the film become far more fun once the ominous instincts start coming to fruition
With the low-key nature revolving around the community’s good-natured if slightly off-kilter behavior or just noticing ritualistic decorations left behind, this is nice enough to serve the film until it gets to the more overt sequences later on once she’s left alone in the apartment. The big sequence plays as a form of bizarre meal-prep with the gathered family members and others she’s met in the community performing what appears to be a ritualistic ceremony designed to prepare her for a special occult ritual that soon turns into a nightmarish fever dream that she can’t tell her dream from reality is quite impressive. It starts the remaining part of this one into a much darker genre effort that includes several reveals about the visions she’s been experiencing, leading to the wild finale where the dark origins of the ceremony are revealed as it’s all about bringing the new spirit into a host' body which is again more low-key than expected but still manages some generally chilling visuals and chases around the complex.
Among the main factors is the sense of confusion present here since very little is explained
These all bring about a lot to like here as although there aren’t too many drawbacks present here several issues do crop up. As the first half is much more ominous and low-key than anything, there’s not much in the way of revealing what’s going on, preferring to remain focused on the haunting atmosphere of the building as well as their ominous behavior to generate the scares almost exclusively. As a result, hardly anything gets revealed about what the community is trying to do, what their ritual entails, or how everything is supposed to be carried out so very little gets brought up.
These are the few minor drawbacks on display with this oneRated Unrated/R: Violence and Language
It’s not until the end that anything comes together so there’s a chance for this to be somewhat confusing at the start to get into what’s going on. The other detriment is that this setup allows for a rather slow-going first half as well and very little happens beyond setting up the storylines which are paid off in the ending so this takes a while to get its point out.
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