Director: Piyapan Choopetch
Starring: Shahkrit Yamnarm, Wanida Termthanaporn, Navadee Mokkhavesa, Atthama Chiwanitchaphan, Bordin Duke
Running time: 86 minutes
Certificate: 18
Asian horror is the birthplace of many an original idea: RINGU, THE PREMONITION, and DARK WATER each gave something new to the horror genre, and were subsequently been milked by Hollywood. On the surface MY EX doesn’t seem to be anything original – but deep down, is it?
Ken (Yamnarm) and Meen (Mokkhavesa) are in love. Ken is a famous actor but has a dark side: his Playboy lifestyle. When Meen announces she is pregnant, the relationship is over – which is handy as he’s been cheating on her with Ploy (Termthananporn). Taken on face value MY EX is a revenge film: broken hearted lady seeks to kill ex’s new lover. However it’s put together in a way which begs many questions – for a start, who are the good guys in this film?
Surely it’s not Ken, the womanising egotist; are neither is it Meen, the psycho ex. On paper, Ploy is the first choice, but like the others, she’s also morally bankrupt, and it’s impossible to relate to any of them. This could also be a result of their terrible acting.
Aside from the characters, MY EX also suffers from Piyapan Choopetch’s clunky direction: a couple of scares are ruined horribly by his eagerness to show the audience too much. Added to this he seems incapable of using a trolley, giving the film a jerky, unpleasant experience.
MY EX’s efforts to try and be original are also a problem: flashbacks are used, and dream sequences segued in to fool the audience, but these tricks never work or help overcome the inherent issues. The antagonist is shown in detail far too early on, and when the killing does start it’s so poorly executed (blood running under a door, etc) that the film fails to muster a jump from the audience.
BUT, whilst MY EX is poor when viewed as a horror film, it could have a deeper meaning. Ken is a poster boy for Thai cinema – he every woman’s fantasy. Put on a pedestal he is made to feel infallible, and his treatment of women could be attributed to this. Meen represents the normal girl done good: she loves Ken, doesn’t care of his superstardom, and is viewed as his one true love. With Meen’s pregnancy comes a change of perception for Ken: gone is the controversy, the sex stories, and the paparazzi shots, he would go from Playboy to family man overnight. So what is so bad about that? Well MY EX may ask this, using the nemesis as a metaphor for the media, or it could just be a poor low-budget horror with a reviewer reading too much into it…
Extras: You don’t get a thing – unless you count chapter selection.
MY EX is released on DVD October 8th and can be ordered here
