The Promise (2017) — Sophon Sakdaphisit
Director Sakdaphisit’s scary road towards getting there.
This is the 4th work by Sophon Sakdaphisit, one of the famous horror creators from Thailand. The man behind “Laddaland” (2011) and “The Swimmers” (2014) — also, an uncredited participation in “Shutter” (2008) — , popular flicks not only in its home country but in all Asia, is not new in the cinema business. He’s been terrorizing Thailand audiences for more than a decade now and what we see in “The Promise” is the result of this much experience. It’s good, but not quite there yet.
The plot is very traditional for a horror film: two friends suffer from their parents economic losses during a financial crisis and promise to kill themselves together, but something goes wrong and only one of them dies. Years later, the dead one comes back to haunt the other who remained alive and broke their promise. Simple and well put, it focuses on the girls’ friendship and on the circumstances in which it ended. Still, the ending could’ve been better. All great horror movies have great endings and this one definitely lacked something.
For the special effects and other technical aspects, director Sakdaphisit did a good job making the best use of the camera and the lightening. Differently from his other films, the bad entity, or the ghost, doesn’t appear as often, leaving it all to the viewer’s imagination, which is always good when well performed. The actors had that soap opera appeal that is often seen in horror films and adds to its trashy appeal, although it has gone a long way from “Coming Soon” (2008), showing a much more professional look. From the shadowy apartment to the abandoned building, location also built a lot of the film’s suspense, especially when one is aware of the rumors surrounding the “Ghost Tower” — the very real Sathorn Unique Tower in Bangkok. Its construction was interrupted by the 1990’s financial crisis, just like in the movie, and it remains abandoned to this day as it keeps as being one of the scariest places in Asia.
Talking about what frightens Asians as hell, the economic crisis was an amazing undertaking in this story, as it still causes panic in every corner of Asia, haunted exactly by the 1990s’ crisis mentioned in “The Promise”. The film accomplishes the feature of taking a real-life event and creating terror around it, which makes it all the better. Other examples of films that have done such things are “Poltergeist”, that invokes the Native American killings, and “The Devil’s Backbone”, that makes reference to the Spanish Civil War.
