The Unborn (a.k.a. The Mother)
Director: Bhandit Thongdee
Year: 2003
Starring: Inthira Charoenpura, Wannakit Siriput,
Karunpon Thieansuwan
Time: 108 minutes
Porawee (Inthira Charoenpura – the heartbreaking
Nang Nak) is a bartender and low level pusher/user who gets on the wrong
side of her drug supplier (Wannakit Siriput) when the money she hands over
doesn’t equal the amount of drugs she has sold. Like every reputable slimy
drug dealer would do in that situation he bashes her around and throws
her off a pier for dead into the water. She survives. But nothing is quite
the same anymore. Something she doesn’t understand happened under the water
that probably saved her life but is driving her to the brink of madness.
In the hospital the doctor informs her that she is ten weeks pregnant and
her first thought is to abort it, but she soon has other worries to occupy
her.
She begins having flashes of visions and horrible
nightmares – except she is awake. She almost drowns in a bathroom stall,
sees a fetus in the water cooler and of course has a longhaired female
ghost slithering towards her. Everyone assumes she is sneaking in drugs
and these are just hallucinations, but a social worker (Karunpon Thieansuwan)
begins to wonder whether she is possessed or is really seeing something
supernatural. An old lady lying in another hospital bed tells him of the
visitor “She will go when she gets what she wants”. But what does this
ghost want?
This film falls squarely in the large bin of ghost
stories influenced by The Ring and this one also owes some moments to “The
Eye”. This sub-genre of pissed off female ghosts who come back to get their
own – but never do it simply but always in a roundabout manner - seems
a bit overdone now but can still give a few chills. This ghost has reasons
to be angry but instead of doing her own dirty work she uses Porawee to
bring about some revenge. The film is fairly uneven – it contains some
nice scenes and images that are creepy – but then hospitals naturally creep
me out – with the first half being decently engrossing. In the second half
though the mood that was created is lost and the film becomes almost a
pedestrian hunt for the bad guys that is so obvious that you wonder why
they bother. Director Bhandit Thongdee also directed the very different
and quite charming musical Hoedown Showdown.
My rating for this film: 5.5
(Inthira Charoenpura)