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DVD Review: The Man Eater (2004)

14th Nov 2006, 15:27 GMT

After the success of Ring-derived ghost stories like The Eye and Shutter, horror films from Thailand are getting more international attention. More often than not, their poster art is more grisly and better produced than the films themselves - like Art of the Devil, where the poor acting and lacklustre cliches are less likely to impress a western audience. The country obviously has an up-and-coming movie industry, so I keep checking out interesting looking films hoping for hits rather than misses. Zee Oui has got a DVD release under the title The Man Eater and it's professionally enough made, but the subject matter is difficult to enjoy. Thai horror films are currently trying hard to compete by literally out-grossing American ones. Li Hui, a Chinese farmer, arrives in Thailand in 1946 and gets renamed 'Zee-Oui' by a short-tempered immigration official. His uncle finds him a job, but the new name has to stick because it matches his work visa. Zee Oui soon discovers that being a foreigner means getting bullied by everyone, even children. He works hard, but suffers poor health - a constant cough that he thinks is asthma. After much bad luck with his jobs, and as we learn more of his harrowing life in China, he resorts to murder. The subject of the story here is problematic to say the least - a serial child-murderer who eats the hearts of his victims! It's especially tricky for western audiences to enter the fray with this particular filmed version of an infamous true-life murder case. It's apparently been portrayed many times before in Thailand, but this version is a more revisionist version of events, showing the murderer in a more sympathetic light. Zee Oui, you see, is apparently a boogey man in Thailand - his trademark cough and cannibalistic traits make him a monstrous figure to threaten naughty kids with. His case is also used as a justification for xenophobes to fear foreigners. Presumably, the two directors of this film were trying to redress the balance. As a viewer completely unfamiliar with the case, the opening scene unfortunately gives away the conclusion to the story, before going into a feature-length flashback. Without a good grasp of local history (like the war between China and Thailand) and Thai geography, I was at a disadvantage in following the fractured timeline of the plot - not always realising when the story had shifted backwards in time. But this is something that other films manage successfully, despite cultural differences (I'm thinking of the back-and-forth structure of The Grudge films, for example). Crucially, a brilliant scene where bullies cause Zee Oui to visibly 'crack' is positioned after we've already seen his murder victims. Whether I misunderstood the order of events, or whether the directors were saying that he was being blamed for murders he did not commit, I'm still not certain. Lead actor Long Duan almost succeeds in an impossible role, to make us sympathise with this man, but we're obviously constantly distanced from him by the brutality of his onscreen crimes. The directors intend for us to better understand his motivations - but besides listing the possible causes of his serial killings, many other political points are clumsily made about racism, sexism, and government cover-ups. Overall, the naive script and convoluted timeline undermine most points they want to make. While this may be award-winning material in Thailand, it's a difficult film to recommend to an international audience. The tone veers between over-the-top depictions of child murder and simplistic drama. The performances are sincere enough, but are undermined by sloppy plotting. Shortcuts taken by the script keep the story moving by using unbelievable coincidences. Moving the detective story along a little slower could have made for more intrigue and suspense, which are lacking. So, without a strong story, and with glimpses of gore at the murder scenes, this can only be placed in the horror film section, presumably on a shelf with the other real-life murder cases that were turned into insensitive horror films. Even so, despite the sensationalist subject, I didn't find the film nearly as shocking as it should have been. The crimes in The Untold Story (Hong Kong, 1993) also managed to produce sympathy for a cannibalistic child-murderer, but were far more effectively portrayed, and with a much lower budget. I guess also that Thai audiences may be just as horrified by the desecration of holy sites, such as a Buddhist shrine. Technically, the film looks very good, with a large scale that convinces us of the many locations and periods depicted. If anything, the art direction looks too good - for instance Li Hui's early job slaughtering chickens takes place in a beautifully lit, colorful backyard, sending out mixed messages about what's occurring - is he in a good or a bad place? If it's such a nasty job, why does the place look so picturesque? The Man Eater is an interesting film, entertaining even -- it's certainly not dull. Technically it's one of the best movies I've seen from Thailand, and the lush locations have rarely been seen before. While it certainly isn't aiming for an obvious 'horror film' formula like many other Thai films, it doesn't succeed as a drama or a reliable version of what really happened. I'd hesitate to recommend it to fans of Asian cinema or Asian horror - it's too gory to be taken seriously, but not horrific enough to be frightening. But if you want to see a good example of a new film from this beautiful country, you could do much much worse.

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