Review: The Snow White (Tai Tang Klom)

• Directed by Sarawut Intaraprom
• Starring Pattaranan Deeratsamee, Nuttapong Chatpong, Prinya Ngamwongwarn, Atiwat Lamgul, Apichaya Mangmeepon, Kapon Tongplub
• Released in Thai cinemas on September 23, 2010; rated 18+
• Wise Kwai's rating: 3/5

Two struggling university students hatch a plan to solve their problems by cutting open the corpse of a pregnant woman and stealing the fetus in order to do black magic spells.

No good can come of this. Except a pretty good low-budget horror film.

Released by the Golden A Entertainment, the low-budget arm of Pacific Island Film, The Snow White (ตายทั้งกลม , Tai Tang Klom) is another one of those films done a disservice by a trailer that, while capturing the key moments of the movie, didn't get me excited about watching it.

Directed by Sarawut Intaraprom, who previously did the indie romance Boring Love, The Snow White is refreshingly coherent and evenly paced, with scares coming at decent intervals, right up to the surprise ending. The main characters are all well drawn. The cast, led by singer "Nannie" Pattaranan Deeratsamee of the pop group Girly Berry, is capable. Lighting and camera are clear. The special-effects look practical, sickening and scary.

In other words, I went into this expecting to see a big mess and was pleasantly surprised.

The story has university student Yong (Nuttapong Chatpong), the spoiled son of a hospital administrator, struggling to keep his grades up. His buddy Pong (Prinya Ngamwongwarn) fancies himself a slick ladies man but is laughed off the dance floor at the nightclub.


Conveniently, the two find a black-magic book on the shelf in their school library and get the idea to steal the fetus from the dead woman's body.

Their scheme ropes in the unwitting participation of hospital orderly Golf (Atiwat Lamgul), who is engaged to Nurse Oh (Nannie).

It's the kind-hearted nurse who generates the most sympathy. In a steady dramatic performance, Nannie's woman in white cares for the hospital's resident nutcase patient, and calms the crazy man by reading him a bedtime story, Snow White. Later, when her boyfriend is injured and weird stuff is happening around the hospital, the nurse turns sleuth as she tries to find out what happened to the dead pregnant woman (Apichaya Mangmeepon).

Among the memorable moments is when a ghostly hand guides the student Yong's pencil in filling in the little circles on a crucial multiple-choice test. Later, Yong starts seeing fetuses in all his food. Little babies, skewered on satay, in his soup and baked into the center of a bun.

Pong makes a perfume out of secretions from the dead mother's chin and applies the scent to nightclub floozies to turn them into sex-crazed demons who want only him. But his session is cut short when those hot girls start looking like the deformed, mouldering corpse of the dead woman.

The bad karma of the characters' actions spreads, so that even the innocent are victims. Lesson learned from The Snow White – leave that dead woman's fetus be; watch more low-budget Thai horror movies instead.


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