September 15, 2026

I have always been a huge fan of foreign horror and in particular Asian Cinema! But when it comes to the genre, its fascinating what different cultures consider “scary.” What you’d find in a Japanese horror film won’t necessarily be the same kind of scares as something from a South Korean movie. In Thai culture, where 90 percent practice Buddhism, their ghost stories are mean, vengeful morality tales, and also very scary! Enter Umbrella Entertainment who released this epic 8-film THAI HORROR COLLECTION box set! I had ordered this, along with a handful of other Umbrella titles, way back in February of 2025 and it landed at my doorstep in late April 2025.

I’d seen one or two of the titles in this set, and those were scary! So, I wasn’t sure where to start, but Alisa (my partner) had heard great things about THE PROMISE so we went with that one. And like a lot of Asian horror, it was creepy, messed up, unpredictable, and kind of depressing! Let’s jump into each film featured in this box set, in no particular order.

THE PROMISE (2017)

Ib (Panisara Rikulsurakan) and Boum (Namthip Jongrachatawiboon) are two teenage best friends and both of their father’s have suffered devastating financial losses during the 90’s economic crash. A giant apartment complex that their families were supposed to build is one of the many bits of collateral damage from the fall out. Ib’s father also has starting beating his daughter in frustration. Both girls are desperate. Boum instigates a suicide pact. They go to their abandoned building project to carry out their dark pact. But after Ib kills herself, Boum is scared and decides not to go through with it.

Many, many years later, now Boum is a widowed mother and has taken over the building project, determined to make right her father’s dream. But her daughter begins suffering from sleepwalking incidents and self harm. It turns out she is under the influence of a very vengeful and pissed off Ib! When it comes to Asian horror, never underestimate the power of good ol’ fashioned REVENGE!

This has some good scares, but some of Boum’s actions are… err… questionable? For example, the little boy of one of her construction workers seems to be one of the only people that can see the ghost of Ib. So, she threatens his families jobs (!) and livelihood unless he helps her deliver the message for Ib to leave her daughter alone!

That aside, it’s still very good, creepy, and has a fairly downbeat, yet somewhat (potentially?) optimistic conclusion. With Halloween season right around the corner, I’m looking forward to delving further into this boxed set!

DORM (2006)

I’ve been watching way too many horror movies that I’ve already seen this Halloween season, so I thought tonight was long overdue to dip back into my Thai Horror box set from Umbrella.

I’d watched THE PROMISE already while Alisa and her mom were in town, so I decided to go back to the very beginning of the set and start off with DORM.

It’s about a lonely boy named Chatree (Charlie Trairat) that’s been shipped off to a school and is having trouble adjusting to his new environment, or getting along with the other seventh graders. After the group stay up late telling various ghost stories as they pertain to the school, Chatree wets his bed and further becomes isolated. There is one other boy who befriends him though, Vichien (Sirachuch Chienthaworn). But it turns out Vichien is not just any other student.

We find out he’s actually the ghost of a boy that drowned at the school years earlier. What started out as a spooky ghost story actually turns into something a lot more emotional, and poignant, in a coming-of-age kind of way. Chatree must figure out how to set his friends soul to rest.

Not what I expected, but still very good! Will continue this Thai Horror journey and see what other surprises are in store…

ALONE (2007)

Whoa. This was a good scary little flick!

Continuing my deep dive into THAI HORROR with this epic Umbrella box set, the second feature being ALONE.

Pim (Marsha Vadhanapanich) gets a call that her mother has suffered a bad fall and stroke, and so with her boyfriend, they go back to Thailand to assess the seriousness of her injury. When Pim was younger, she was a conjoined twin and sometime after getting separated, her sister Ploy died. (Although we’re not told the circumstances of her death.)

Now, back at home, she begins to see the vengeful spirit of her dearly departed sister! Ah, but her past isn’t exactly what we thought it to be!

Best going in blindly with this one. There were quite a few solid jump scares. Thai ghosts, in general, are scary. And there’s a pretty great twist I didn’t expect or see coming that really turned the narrative on its head.

But BEWARE! There is a pretty horrible dog death in the movie that came quick and abruptly, and it’s definitely one of the most upsetting ones I’ve ever seen in a film! Otherwise, this is a pretty great Asian ghost story!

4BIA (2008)

Up next in the Thai Horror Umbrella box set is 4BIA! (Or PHOBIA) A 4-segment horror anthology! And like all anthologies, it’s a mixed bag, but mostly pretty good!

The opening story involves a lonely girl, stuck in her apartment after a car accident with a broken leg. She begins a text relationship with a boy, but he may not be who he says he is! The second story is an interesting story about a boy being mercilessly bullied by a group of the “cool” kids. And they are CRUEL beyond belief. So the boy may be looking into applying some black magic to enact his revenge! Are Thai kids this cruel in reality?! While the concept of this one was pretty interesting, it had some of THE worst CGI I’d ever seen in any horror movie.

Thankfully, the third story righted the ship and was a somewhat comic tale about four friends out camping and rafting, spouting movie references and spoiling the end of certain movies before having an accident of their own! Is one of them now haunting the other three? Lastly, in the fourth and final story, a Princess is torturing (emotionally, not literally) a flight attendant that she believes is having an affair with her Prince.

This was a pretty decent collection of horror shorts and a fun anthology! Up next in the set is the sequel! Which, I have to believe is also an anthology!

LADDALAND (2011)

It’d been a while since I dug into Umbrella’s excellent THAI HORROR box set! So, tonight, Alisa and I continued with LADDALAND, another one from director Sophon Sakdaphisit.

In this one, Thee (Saharat Sangkapreecha) moves his family to the town of Ladda land when he accepts a new marketing job and hopes this will be a big step forward in providing for his family as his mother-on-law is pretty harsh on him.

His wife, Parn (Piyathida Woramusik) is supportive. And his son Nat is young enough that he goes along with the family, but his teenage daughter Nan (Sutatta Udomsilp) is rebellious and mean to her struggling father. The movie them goes in very unexpected directions. A body is discovered in an abandoned house in town in a refrigerator. The kids break in for the fun of it and see some supernatural shit. Similarly, one great set piece shows Thee encountering what appears to be a ghost in his own home, but turns out to be a thief in a Halloween mask. (A great misdirect.)

Whereas I thought maybe there’d be more of a mystery with the one girl that was murdered in the house, trying to somehow set herself at rest, LADDA LAND goes beyond that as there are far more sinister ghosts lurking through out the entire town. While it’s not exactly “based on a true story,” it is loosely based upon a real, defunct tourist attraction in Chiang Mai, Thailand, which is spooky in of itself!

It also ends on a very dark note, something most of these Thai Horror films have in common. It’s so interesting, I just saw the new INSIDIOUS: OUT OF THE FURTHER, and while I had a good enough time, I was kinda bummed that it was just borrowing from the NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET franchise and the original INSIDIOUS rather than doing something truly new, unique, fresh, or even scary. (The first INSIDIOUS will always be scary.) But holy shit! The Thai directors, and in particular Sophon Sakdaphisit who has done several of these, really does know how to set up a great scare. And not just a jump scare, but something truly chilling.

This was definitely a highlight and now with Halloween season almost upon us, I look forward to finishing up this THAI HORROR box set!

PHOBIA 2 (2009)

I had seen the first 4BIA anthology a while back from this Umbrella Thai Horror box set. Tonight, I finally dove into the sequel which features five horror tales!

“Novice” opens up the film, telling a story about a young boy dropped off in a monastery after committing a vile act of vandalism on the road which results in someone’s death! (We find out exactly who at the finale of this short.) He happens to be there during the annual festival where the monks feed the “hungry ghosts.” Of course, he stupidly tampers with their offerings and a little comeuppance is delivered by a giant tree ghost monster.

In the second segment, “Ward,” young teenager Arthit is stuck in the only room available next to a dying shaman. But when the lights go out, is the spirit of the shaman trying to cause him harm? “Backpackers,” the third segment is wild! A couple hitchhiking on the side of the road manage to flag down a truck driver and his son (I think?). They hear noises from the cargo in the back, pull over, and it is filled with dead bodies! They were poor people running drugs and, welp, looks like those bags burst in their insides! But that’s not the worst of it. They all simultaneously come back as frenzied zombies!

“Salvage,” the fourth segment, initially started out looking like the cheapest of the bunch about a woman who runs a used car dealership, primarily with stock from refurbished cars that were in deadly accidents. Alone at night with only her infant son running around the lot, she begins to hear and then see some gnarly things associated to the car’s past owners! Of the five, this ended up being the scariest one!

Last but not least is “In The End,” and I loved this segment. It’s more horror comedy than anything and it takes place during the shooting of ALONE 2! (Ha!) A Thai crew is shooting a sequel to the first film in this Thai Horror box set! And they got the lead actress to come back and play herself! When Kate, the actress portraying the “ghost” falls ill and is taken to the hospital, word gets back to the crew that Kate didn’t make it. But then… why is she back on set shooting her scenes? A hilarious tale of misunderstandings and misinterpretations. Kind of reminded me of my favorite episode of AMAZING STORIES, “Mummy Daddy” which does a similar thing. I know some people don’t like comedy in their horror, but for me, it’s my sweet spot and so I loved this and thought it was the perfect way to end this anthology!

This box set had paid off in dividends in terms of pure entertainment value! Two more features to go, one of which I’d seen before and remember being scary as hell!

COUNTDOWN (2012)

I was warned this was, by far, the weakest movie in Umbrella’s Thai Horror release, and that turned out to be true. It’s New Years Eve on 2013 and three Thai friends living in New York City call a random number on a card for a drug dealer named Jesus. They figure they’d get stoned going into the New Year. This guy shows up (mostly speaking English because of the NY setting) but it turns out he’s not exactly who you think he is.

They never distinctly tell you. Is he a demon? THE devil? He knows all their darkest secrets and starts exploiting them to embarrass and torment each person. Jack (Pachara Chirathivat) has squandered his parents fortune by living in NYC for 3 full years and never actually applying to college as he told them. He’s just partying. Pam (Pattarasaya Kreuasuwansri) is just sad because her Italian boyfriend (who barely speaks English) dumps her on New Years Eve so she went on a shopping spree with money she stole from her roommates. Poor Bee (Jarinporn Joonkiat) sinned the worst! She fled Thailand after being responsible for killing a family of four in a reckless car accident. Oof.

So, it’s got that torture porn element from horror of the mid-2000’s. And also the morality of A CHRISTMAS CAROL, where they’re forced to face the mistakes of their past. I just wish it were a better movie. Poorly shot, over-lit, over-acted. But still, it’s not bad. It’s just weak in comparison to the rest of the films in the box set.

COMING SOON (2008)

I had seen the 2008 Thai horror film COMING SOON once before because someone had mysteriously left the DVD at my house, much like the video tape from THE RING! I was convinced it was my friend Andrew Kasch since he’s a pretty big fan of Asian horror but when I tried to return it to him, he was baffled! I remember it being scary as hell, so I decided to save it for last in my epic Umbrella THAI HORROR boxed set, and I’m glad I did. I think overall this is my favorite, and the scariest, movie in the entire set.

The opening alone can be it’s own urban legend with how creepy and brutal it is. It starts with a little girl, being held captive against her will, trying to escape the cabin of Chaba, a horribly disfigured woman with burns all over her face, a limp on one bad leg, and stringy hair. It turns out that she lost her own children and so in her grief, she has stolen several children from the town, cut out their eyes, and forced them to be an obedient part of her household, that is, until the townspeople come bursting into her house looking for revenge! And in Freddy Krueger style, they take it! They slash her face and string her up with intent to hang her to death! But then…

Boom, we’re actually in a movie theater watching scenes from a print of “Revengeful Spirit!” It’s just a movie, supposedly inspired by true events, and Shane (Chantavit Dhanasevi), one of the theaters employees, and his friend / co-worker Yod (Thanatorn Oudsahakul), are trying to sneak out a camcorder bootleg of it for a local thug that’s kind-of bullying them into it. (Kind of unique for a movie. Instead of the local drug dealer, he’s the local movie bootlegger!)

Yod mysteriously disappears and Shane sees that something in his camcorder footage scared him off screen. Shane and his ex-girlfriend Som (Vorakarn Rojjanavatchra) start seeing the vengeful spirit from the movie! Could there be something supernatural at play? As they continue to investigate the “true story” that inspired the film, they wonder, could this be the vengeful ghost of the real Chaba?

(Actually, there’s a pretty great twist regarding Chaba and who the ghost might actually be.)

At a very lean 80 minutes, this is the shortest movie in this THAI HORROR collection, but also the scariest in terms of scares per minute. They really go for broke with jump scares and creating creepy set pieces. The horror movie within the horror movie is so mean-spirited and gnarly, I almost wish that was the entire movie! But alas, COMING SOON is a fascinating look at Thai horror culture, which definitely has distinct characteristics from other Asian horror like Japanese and Korean cinema. I mean, I thought the Koreans were mean! But Thai horror is both mean AND hopeless.

*All of the above reviews have come from my personal Letterboxd account where I’ve gotten back into the habit of reviewing all of the films I watch. Please feel free to follow along: https://letterboxd.com/RobertVGalluzzo