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Fighting Against a Vampire and a Ghost
This film essentially begins with a young man by the name of "Yasith" and his pregnant girlfriend "Maya" attending a concert on the outskirts of a village in the Battambang province of Cambodia and upon walking home together they are attacked by a group of thugs alongside a path in the forest. Although Yasith fights back, he is eventually stabbed and killed while Maya is gang-raped and left in an unconscious state. As it so happens, however, a seriously wounded female vampire just happens to be in a tree overlooking the incident and dribbles some saliva into Maya's mouth which has the effect of turning her into a vampire as well. The scene then shifts to 16 years later with a group of students traveling from Phnom Penh on a field trip to Batambang to study the area and the local temples located there. Naturally, needing a place to stay they settle upon a large house which, as luck would have it, is owned by Maya who is quite cordial at first. That changes, unfortunately, when she feels disrespected by a comment from one of these students and--along with the ghost of her vampire predecessor--decides to kill all of them. Now, rather than reveal any more, I will just say that this film relies heavily upon Southeast Asian folklore and as a result some of it seemed quite strange to me. For example, the vampire tradition is quite different there than the Western version in that in Cambodia the vampire (or "Krasue" as it is known in Thailand) has its head detached from its mortal body and floats in the air at night with its entrails fastened beneath it as it feeds upon the blood of its victims. To complicate matters, the English subtitles weren't that good and--although I managed to understand what was going on for the most part--I may have missed some of the context in translation. Likewise, while I normally try to link the actor's name to their respective character, I found it impossible to do so even though I searched all of the movie websites known to me. As far as the technical merits of the film are concerned, I think I should start out by saying the Cambodian film industry is still in its infancy and like so many other facets of this society it suffered greatly under the atrocities of the Pol Pot regime. No question about it and for that reason alone this film deserves some credit for its success nationally. That being said, however, some of the faults were simply too obvious to be ignored with the graphics easily standing out the most. Throw in some bad acting, inept humor and one-dimensional characters and its hard for me to rate this film any higher than I have. Below average.
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- Uriah43
- Jan 8, 2022
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- Nieng arp
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- Runtime2 hours 31 minutes
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