The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

It is interesting even when nothing much happens, which is for most of its 3-hour running time. Read full review

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

4bia is an anthology of four supposedly scary stories from four different Thai directors. Interestingly, horror movies' compilations allow the viewer to briefly explore and experience the many competences of different directors. Yongyoot Thongkongtoon (Happiness), Paween Purikitpanya (Tit for Tat), Banjong Pisanthanakun (In the Middle) and Parkpoom Wongpoom (Last Flight) delivered, in this particular case, four entirely distinctive segments reviewed below.Happiness, the first segment, introduces the viewer to the story of a girl who has suffered a car accident, which has left her at home for the past three months with a broken leg. As she feels lonely at home, the main protagonist decides to answer an unknown text she receives in her cell phone. Review. Peculiarly, no dialog is registered during the whole movie and the plot is based for the majority of the film in only one character. A nerve-wracking atmosphere is chiefly well constructed considering the characteristics of the short story. Even though the film aspires to principally create a feeling of insecurity and suspense, the director tentatively cared to include a minimal explanation for the occurring events throughout the movie.In Tit for Tat, a group of obnoxious teenagers attacks a classmate, eventually accidentally pushing him off of a speeding vehicle. The victim returns nevertheless to punish the ones that have maltreated him. Review. Tremendously ineffective and mind-numbing, the second installment of the anthology seems to be pitifully dragged for more than 20 minutes, making it an exercise in patience. The characters are extremely annoying, the acting is probably the worst of the four segments, the death scenes aren't even original, dreadful special effects, exacerbated amounts of blood coming out of one single body, stains of blood looking like red wine stains and with CGI being probably even worse than the one observed in a 0.49$ video game. All in all, Tit for Tat intends to be a tale of revenge although it only achieves being easily considered the worst segment of the movie.In the Middle describes the adventure of four friends out camping. After spending the night sharing ghost stories, an unexpected accident happens the following day, as one of them appears to drown in the river. Review. From the beginning, an intended humorous component in the movie is observed, although it may seem out of place and particularly not that hilarious overall. Mentioning Shutter, his previous masterpiece, twice is also peculiarly awkward and quite embarrassing specially considering that the quality of In the Middle is visibly inferior to the referred movie. The stereotypical teenagers are mostly annoying borderlining a childish attitude and the plot is poorly developed. A final twist is registered at the end of the movie although not being particularly satisfactory.With Last Flight, the viewer is introduced to the story of a stewardess that is chosen to be the only flight attendant on a flight taking home the body of deceased princess. Review. Contrarily to Banjong Pisanthanakun who was also, alongside with Parkpoom Wongpoom, the co-director of Alone and Shutter, the director in this case is able to deliver the most mature and disturbing segment of the anthology. The four installment of the compilation is by far the best developed and most interesting. With the plot being claustrophobically confined to an airplane, the movie is capable of creating an atmosphere of suspense and terror. Notwithstanding a predictable ending and a few well-known clichés in every Asian horror movie, the movie embraces a decent and well-constructed argument. The acting is quite superior as well to the one registered in the previous segments and overall, the short story appears to be the most consistent and solid of the four.All in all, the movie clearly does not work as a whole, being far from cohesive. Interestingly though, a connection appears to have been created between the four segments, although it almost seems irrelevant at the end considering how distinctive the stories are and how the concept of facing fears is treated in each segment.http://asian-cineblog.blogspot.pt/2013/10/4bia.html

For a Thai horror movie, then "Phobia" was a lukewarm experience, because it wasn't particularly scary.The first segment, titled "Happiness", was the best of all four stories. It was also the most interesting story of them all. The director had managed to struck a nail with this story, as it was portrayed really well.The second segment, titled "The Deadly Charm" had a nice story as well, though the CGI generated dead people looked like something made on a Commodore 64. That was really an eyesore to behold. For a tale of revenge, then it wasn't all that shabby.The third segment, titled "The Man in the Middle", had an interesting enough story, with sort of a "The Sixth Sense" going on. However, the story was portrayed in a way to comical way, that really brought the story down to a childish level. And the way that the young men were behaving was also helping bring the story further down.The fourth and final segment, titled "The Last Flight" was the second-most interesting story, and it had the most scare effect of all the four stories together.The acting in all stories, except the third one (The Man in the Middle) was good, and you could easily get into the stories. However, the stories are fairly short, and they suffer under that criteria, which is a shame. As a aficionado of Asian horror movies, then I was looking forward to sitting through this, but the end result was a somewhat less than average experience, unfortunately.That being said, I will still make it through the sequel, but more on that later.

I read good reviews about this movie on IMDb and a few other places so I decided to give it a try.The acting throughout these movies seem fine, but they speak, for the most part, in a foreign tongue so I can only determine the quality of the acting based on body language and facial expressions. I'd say they all did a good job.The atmosphere was well set up, even in Middleman, which I enjoyed the most because of the comical references to other horror movies. The last segment probably had the best atmosphere, although I'd like to mention that I was impressed by the first segment's success in telling a beautiful story with such minimal vocal dialogue. That was impressive acting.This movie had very little emotional power to me. Only the Deadly Charm segment got me a little upset at the cruelty that we do to each other. Aside from that, I didn't get scared or sad or anything in this movie. Oh, I did laugh a few times during the Middleman segment.Overall, this was an okay movie. The writers probably had some good weed but should've smoked more of it. Why not tie the segments together and make it a full movie? There were minor references that tied some of the segments together but they had nothing to do with each other. If all four segments were linked together, this movie would've been more fun to watch. Instead, I feel like I watched four little movies.I'd recommend this movie for hardcore Asian horror fans who like to have something in the background while PvP'ing in World of Warcraft. Hardcore Asian horror fans who don't play WoW probably won't enjoy watching this movie too much. If you're not a fan of Asian horror at all, then skip this movie and go sign up for a World of Warcraft account. If you're none of the aforementioned, then well...what do you do for fun?

It's been a while since I've seen a Thai horror I really liked... or ever, maybe, since the most memorable is Shutter and I wasn't as taken with it as most people were (though I want to give it a second viewing).4bia is an anthology of four horror stories of about a half hour each, and written/directed by four different individuals (they're all Thai names and I really can't tell their genders by their names). As such, it's an uneven - though largely fun - ride.I liked the first story, 'Happiness' the best. It's a very simple tale about a girl resting at home alone with a broken leg who gets haunted by a ghost through text messages. What's good about it is the claustrophobic setting, and the director's superb handling of suspense, from shots of the phone waiting for it to buzz, to when the lights go out and the girl's fumbling in the dark. The big payoff is unfortunately a cheap scare, but well, it worked. I jumped.The second story, 'Tit for Tat,' I liked the least. A bunch of bullies are menaced by ghosts created by their victim's black magic. This segment had an over-reliance of obviously cheap special effects and wasn't particularly scary.'In the Middle,' the third story, was a humorous one about four guys out camping and trying to scare each other with ghost stories. That is, till one of them drowns in a rafting accident. There was some good suspense here and I liked the makeup on the ghost. That face stayed with me after the movie.The last story, 'Last Fright,' was pretty good too, albeit a bit stupid: A flight attendant is requested to transport the corpse of a princess whose husband she was having an affair with. A woman alone on a plane with a vengeful corpse - nice use of claustrophobia there too, though the suspense wasn't as good as with the first story.All-in-all, I really liked this movie because three of its directors generated pretty good suspense, which is quite hard to find in today's horrors, since they're inclined towards gore and cheap "Boo!" scares. Pity about the weak link.