A pregnant woman is abandoned by her lover. Enraged, she goes to a witch doctor and uses black magic to have her ex and his family killed, only for another woman claiming to be her lover's secret mistress to claim his inheritance and move into his house with her children. Not long after that, inexplicable things happen to that family and, one by one, they begin to die.
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Reviews
I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.
I am only giving this movie a 1 for the great cast, though I can't imagine what any of them were thinking. This movie was horrible
Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.
I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.
This is the Thai answer to all those black magic horror films made in Hong Kong during the 1970s and '80s. The plot is virtually the same, involving a jilted lover and her efforts to punish the man who abandoned her by resorting to black magic (the same plot was used in 1981's BEWITCHED). However, while those films have gone down as gruesome classics of horror cinema, ART OF THE DEVIL is a somewhat lacklustre retelling of the same story.The problems lie in the technical details. This is a poorly edited film and the director doesn't seem to want to make the events that play out very clear. It's also overlong, with the second half of the movie introducing an unbelievable plot twist as the villainess goes after more innocent folk – this time her lover's ex-wife! It's little more than an excuse for more gruesome deaths but the novelty quickly wears off.The cast isn't particularly good for a film of this calibre. There's plenty of overacting – especially from the villainess - and little subtlety, aside from the actor playing the investigative reporter. There ARE some good gruesome bits, one involving the old joke with a victim having an evil presence under his skin, and his efforts to cut it out. Of course there are also moments of bad taste, as is the norm for this genre of production. A guy vomits up eels in one unpleasant scene while the nastiest bit involves the rotting corpse of a baby being used in a ritual. Such moments come few and far between however, and this is a case of style over substance. In the end it's a disappointment, feeling like a half-hearted attempt to emulate the classics of old.
Despite certain other "reviews", this movie is NOT Taiwanese, it is Thai, Thailand and Taiwan are a long way apart, certainly in distance if not in culture.If you expect to see any Thai movies that are based on Western precepts, then you will be decidedly disappointed.Belief in ghosts, black magic is normal in Thailand, ridiculous scenarios (to us Westerners) seem perfectly logical to Thais.It is a movie with its faults like many movies, it is not by any means perfect.But these sort of movies should be viewed with a bit of a different perspective to the multi million Spielberg Hollywood trash, generally, most Thai movies seem to be either slapstick ranting and screaming, whereas once in a while you will find a more reasonable stance, at least you can watch this without cringing.If you watch these movies, you really need to expect to have all logic turned on its head regarding what you are generally used to.Not my cup of tea, but better than so many from here.
But only as high as a 6.First off, I have to say that my copy of the DVD will not play the original Thai audio, so I am stuck with the horrible English overdubs. I kept the subtitles on anyways but had to laugh at how different they were from the spoken lines. Sometimes the dialogue was more detailed and sometimes the subtitles were.So due to the fact I had to listen to the overdubbed version, I cannot comment on the acting as a whole. Most of the physical acting was decent, with body language and whatnot, but nothing really stood out.The Story: Pretty decent revenge/black magic story. The woman has an affair with a married man, gets pregnant, wants hush money, gets gang raped by the married mans friends, demands more money, gets bitch slapped around and then wants revenge. You're sort of torn about how you're supposed to feel about the main girl. She's sort of a slut and seems a bit like a gold digger, but she was also cast aside by the baby's daddy and raped by his friends. So you can see why she wants revenge but not to the extent she takes it, which is why she makes a good villain. She's a very pretty girl but can definitely pull off the evil look to her. The story gets a bit confusing at first since a lot happens in such a quick time with little explanation, but picks up a bit more later. She kills one part of the family and then moves on to the other side (It' sort of confusing to explain). You never connect with any of the characters except for Nam (the other main girl), so when a character dies, big deal. The twist (if you can call it that) is a bit weird, but very typical for a horror film. The little albino girl (or maybe she was just Swedish) was a bit creepy which I'm sure was their intentions. What, or who, the albino girl represented can be disputed. I won't go into detail as not to spoil too much.Now for some of the technical aspects. Some of the graphics were very bad, but I'm guessing this was somewhat a low budget so understandable. The physical graphics as in the gore (spitting up bloody razors, nails coming out of the head, the eels, stabbing, etc) was pretty good, something that if was digitalized, would have made this worse. Some shots were very well done but a lot seemed amateurish.Now was it entertaining? Yes, it was. Worth a rent if you can deal with cheesy horror films. Just make sure the Thai audio track works, or you may just laugh a lot at the English overdubs (especially the scene where the mother is being haunted by the previous family killed by the girl).6 out of 10 for being entertaining, with some good gore and a decent story
Fans of unusual Asian horror will no doubt be familiar with the spate of weird and rather unsavoury films that emerged from Hong Kong in the early 80s; titles such as The Devil, Seeding of a Ghost, Centipede Horror, Calamity of Snakes, and Devil Fetus delivered disgusting gore mixed with black magic, and quite often featured a plethora of slimy or creepy critters (bugs, worms, eels, snakes etc.) crawling from corpses or victims' mouths.Thailand's 2004 horror Art of the Devil, from director Tanit Jitnukul, is very reminiscent of such films: it's a revenge film that sees a woman using magic to torment and kill the family of a man who wronged her. It features some nasty gore, plenty of hokey voodoo rituals (including one that involves the use of a dead baby!), and LOTS of eels, but although it has the occasional good moment, the film is rather tedious overall, not as nasty as I had expected, and is hampered by some mediocre acting.Jitnukul's direction is slick and the film has a very polished look, but with a narrative that meanders rather aimlessly until the predictable conclusion, plus lots of confusing flashbacks, it's hard to stay interested for the duration. Lead actresses Arisa Wills and Supakson Chaimongkol (as vengeful bitch, Boom) are both easy on the eye, and provide a little incentive to remain focused, but, in the end, Art of the Devil proves to be nothing more than another forgettable horror flick.5.5 out of 10, rounded up to 6 for IMDb.