Rahtree: Flower of The Night aka : Buppah Rahtree (Hong Kong Version) DVD Region 3

Buppah Rahtree is an isolated, self-contained girl. She's at the top of her class in medical school, but has no friends and carries a secret, tragic past with her. She does, however, have an admirer in Ake, a wealthy young man who was drawn to her when she turned down the advances of his best friend. Rahtree eventually opens up to Ake but what should have been a happy ending for her turns progressively more tragic. Ake turns out to be an entirely amoral cad and Rahtree, pregnant from their lone weekend together, is pressured into an abortion and abandoned in her run down apartment where things turn septic. She dies and is undiscovered for at least a month. And this is just the set up which, I'm sure you will agree, is rather unusually tragic for a film most commonly billed as a horror comedy.

Things really get rolling after Rahtree's corpse is discovered. The police arrive and she is shrouded according to local custom, but when they try to remove the corpse, it simply refuses to go, twitching wildly until the police drop it and run screaming from the room. Rahtree's body may be dead but her spirit is very much alive, very angry, and it will not leave without a fight. The film then tracks a succession of unsuccessful exorcists, who are run through the building at the behest of the apartment manager desperate to stop her remaining tenants from fleeing the obviously haunted building. The situation is further complicated by the return of the guilt-stricken Ake, who turns up on the scene desperate to make amends, completely unaware that Rahtree has died.

Of the many elements Sippapak fuses together here - he has shown a consistent desire to experiment and push genre boundaries in his films - it is the horror and tragic elements that work best. Though the blood comes in bursts rather than waves, Sippapak clearly knows what he's doing with all of his key imagery hitting home powerfully, particularly Rahtree's ghostly flashback to the night of her death. The tragedy element is also strong with both Rahtree and Ake standing as intriguingly - and realistically - flawed characters. They are both very well written and performed, giving the film a degree of character depth uncommon in genre film.

On the negative side the film's limited budget is apparent on a few occasions, though not distractingly so. What will be more of an issue for most are the comic elements. For those unfamiliar with Thai comedy, what you need to know is that it is very broad, very loud, and very culturally specific. For those unfamiliar with Thai culture, it can take some getting used to and many, quite frankly, never will. As a consequence, even though Rahtree: Flower of the Night is rather restrained by Thai comic standards, many will find the shifts in tone jarring rather than funny.

The DVD release is a bit of a mixed bag. Presented in anamorphic widescreen, the transfer is clear of dirt or damage, but seems a bit murky at times. The subtitles are clear enough, but are better described as workmanlike than nuanced, and the disc is entirely barebones with no special features to speak of. Still, the film has earned its reputation and will be of great interest to many cult film fans, and the disc does a competent job of getting it out there.

Review By Todd Brown - Twitchfilm.net