Review: Coming Soon 2008

“Coming Soon” is an unacceptably underrated Thai horror film that I thought was totally awesome. Once again, certainly not a perfect film, but the concept on which it is all based IS perfect. The concept? That a movie could continue to affect it’s viewers after they watch it. Every scary-movie-watcher’s nightmare! Let’s face it, after we watch a ‘scary movie’ we’re a little ‘on edge’, afraid something is hiding under the bed or lurking in the corner of a dark room.. But the main comfort is the knowledge that countless people have already seen the movie too and nothing happened to them… But what if the movie hasn’t hit theatres yet? What if it’s ‘coming soon’?!
“Coming Soon” tells the story of Shane, a young man who works at a movie theatre that will soon be showing a new film called “Vengeful Spirit” about a disturbed, evil woman named Shomba who lost her children and tries to replace them by stealing little girls from the nearby village. Shane is desperate for money and agrees to allow a friend to secretly videotape the movie so they can sell bootleg copies. But after his friend turns up dead, Shane reviews the tape and begins seeing things, himself. Together with a friend, Shane attempts to discover the true reason behind the power this film seems to have, all the while, trying to keep it from being viewed by anyone else, and struggling to elude Shomba’s supernatural grasp!
I’ll admit this movie is a bit erratic, and the subtitles (at least the ones that I had…) were often a laughable translation (which is, of course, nothing against the movie at all, I can just understand people being put-off by the poor translations), but the general premise of the film is absolutely sound and the movie could have been terrifying, had it been handled more carefully. The reviews on this film are predominantly poor, but there are still plenty of people who thought it was decent, and even a few who absolutely loved it. So give it a chance, who knows?