This time out, it’s a quick look at the recent Thai horror offering “6:66 Death Happens”. It’s another of those Thai goodies released to their domestic DVD market sans English subtitle, but your Favorite Catgirl has never… ever… let that stand in her way of getting her Thai horror fix before, now has she? Nope…
Our synopsis goes like this: “Bangkok based Crime reporter Dao (Susie-Susira Angelina Nanna) has to uncover strange and unexplainable incidents in the next 24 hours. She received news from the hospital that her father (Yodchai Meksuwan) has been miraculously resurrected from the death after being dead for more than 15 consecutive years since the departure of her mother.
She experiences few incidents that are related to death such as feeling wanting to die and is determined to find out the truth about it. Joining her is an old-time police friend, Wut (Jason Young) who is interested to discover the truth about her father’s resurrection story. Both are battling the power of death and she may as well become the next victim…”
Yep…. this one most certainly sounds like one of those films your Favorite Catgirl can’t get enough of…. Weird supernatural hauntings… the dead refusing to stay dead…. babies refusing to be born…. old family secrets that lurk in the closet like skeletons….. Naturally I’m all for snugglin’ in to make a night of movie watchin’ bliss. Not to worry though, I’ll tell ya all about it.
Psssst!! That means it’s time to “Read On”, you silly lil’ doofus!!
Our story starts with intrepid photo journalist Dao on the prowl in some ruined building on the trail of a juicy story…. but while this is going on, her father is setting fire to his study and preparing for what appears to be a rather messy bit of suicide by gun. At exactly the same time as this, Dao gets a bit more than she bargained for when the meeting between a crooked businessman and his hired gun goes so, so wrong and ends in a violent murder. Worse… the killer spots her and tries to kill her, shooting her in the chest at point blank range just as her father puts a bullet in his head on the other side of the city. Somehow… miraculously she survives without a scratch…. But then, things in a horror movie are never that easy are they?
Dao figures she just got lucky… the flash of her camera must have thrown the killer’s aim off at the crucial moment, right? Her watch is shattered… maybe it deflected the bullet and saved her… that could explain it. That or he just plain missed her. Either way… with the photos of the murder, she’s got one hot scoop for her editor and a shot at making quite a name for herself. But… before she can celebrate, she gets the bad news about her dad. In shock, she hurries to the hospital where her father’s body lays in the morgue as cold and dead as anybody can be. …..Or is he? Only moments after her arrival, he’s up and moving and very much alive…. fairly well messed up, the way only a bullet in the ol’ noggin’ is likely to leave you, but despite all sensible logic, alive.
Here’s where our film starts to build it’s tension and suspense. Seems Dao and her professor father haven’t spoken in years…. ever since he killed Dao’s mother by unhooking her from a respirator when she was a little girl. To an outsider… this was an act of mercy, ending the suffering of someone he loved, but to Dao it was a betrayal she’s never been able to get past. Unknown to her, her father had become obsessed with death itself….. and specifically the idea that one could use mathematics to unravel the universe’s secrets to finally know the exact moment of any person’s date of death. His rooms are filled with all sorts of creepy news clippings and the cryptic scribblings of either a genius or a madman…. culminating in his seemingly inexplicable suicide attempt. Doubly strange given the discovery of the calculations showing his own death to be some 15 years away.
In some way, and for reasons he’s now unable to explain… Dao’s father has managed to disrupt something in the very fabric of the universe. The Buddhist cycle of birth, death, and rebirth has been thrown completely out of whack by his actions. Now… it seems… no one can die, and no one can be born either. So what’s the problem with that you ask? Well…. not dying doesn’t mean that you can’t get terribly, horribly messed up by accidents, or spend the remainder of your existence trapped in utter agony. Oh yeah…. and that really sucks just as much as it sounds…..
In true “Final Destination” fashion, “Death Happens” doesn’t leave it at that either. Seems some dark force is now following Dao… who by now we understand was supposed to have died by the hand of that killer on that fateful night, but who was spared by her father’s sacrifice for the little girl he still loves more than his own life itself even if she still hates him. Yep…. Death, or Karma, or the Universe wants things back to normal and it’s gonna do that by trying to finish off Dao to put things back on track. We get several hallucinatory episodes as Dao is killed… over and over in various ways, yet somehow surviving those events as if they never happened at all.
So… basically the Universe is screwed. Dao is slow to figure this all out of course, and much of the movie revolves around her and Inspector Wut as they go about encountering these bizarre “non-deaths” and “non-births” while piecing together what her father had been up to all those years they were estranged. Ahhh…. and naturally, the murderer she photographed is on her trail too. He wants her photos and to eliminate any witnesses to his crime…. but darn it, Dao is just one tough lady to kill these days…..
Eventually, it gets revealed that all this stuff her father was up to was to discover not his own death date, but hers… the exact moment her watch was broken… and to save her the only way possible, by substituting himself for her in the cosmic calculations of life and death. Unfortunately he didn’t understand what saving her would mean to the “Big Picture”. So what’s the ultimate resolution here? Hmmmm? Well Neko’s certainly not gonna tell you…. you’ll probably want to find out for yourself. Let’s just say this… the Universe can certainly be one mean uncaring bitch when it comes to rules and regulations….
So… to wrap things up, Neko can give “6:66 Death Happens” a reasonable 3 “Meows” out of 5 for being a competent lil’ thriller, but I wish it had been just a wee bit more original. The effects are good…. and you’ll get more messed up nearly dead guys than any movie really needs here, along with one truly creepy scene where a baby pops out of a pregnant woman for a look-see before being sucked back in… painfully, I might add…. The acting is acceptable if not inspired, and our heroine Dao appealing enough to hold your sympathy as you figure out the world of shit she’s stuck in. All in all a nice film, but not a groundbreaking one. The original Thai Region 3 PAL disc is nothing special…. but it is up to their usual competent standards. Sigh…. yes, no English subtitles… yet again (Booooo!!!)…. but the fansubs available for this one are timed properly and more than adequate for you viewing pleasure. Still… I expect this one will pop up in HK eventually, so unless you speak Thai… (or are a hopeless Thai movie junkie like a certain lil’ Catgirl) you could wait a bit to catch this one when it becomes available there with subtitles in place.
Yep… there’s a subtitled Trailer available… and here it goes just for you!