Anthology movies are the movie industry's answer to the fast food culture. Stringing together several usually unrelated segments into a feature-length movie comes at the expense of plot and character development, but that is accepted as long as the variety in flavor keeps the audience interested. This principle works especially well with the horror/thriller genre. 2008 Thai movie 4bia (a play on the word "phobia") is a prime example of a delectable horror set meal. Directed by the cream of Thailand's scare masters, 4bia serves up 4 dishes of spooky short stories, ensuring that there's something for different audiences.

The appetizer is Iron Ladies helmer Youngyooth Thongkonthun's Happiness. A girl is crutches-bound and confined to her apartment after breaking her leg in a car accident. Her only way of getting in touch with the outside world is through the Internet and her cell phone. One day, she receives an SMS message from a stranger and soon, the lonely girl begins to engage in heated cell phone messaging with this mysterious courter.... The atmosphere gradually builds up and once the girl sends over her picture, the creeps factor kicks in and lasts all the way, even after the big jump.

For the next course, Body builder Paween Purijitpanya offers a ghost revenge tale in Tit for Tat. Loosely modeled after the Final Destination movies with Saw-like frantic editing and fancy camera tricks, this second act appeals to the audience with short attention span. A teenage gang bullies a schoolboy and causes his death - but not before the victim casts a deadly spell on them. This one boasts an adorable actress with admirable acting, some cringe-inducing torture kills, plenty of blood and gore, and an overdose of CG effects.

In The Middle, the third dish made by Banjong Pisanthanakun (Shutter, Alone), gives us a change of pace with a fairly funny and frightening story about four friends going camping in a forest. As the young men lie down in a tent at night, they tell ghost stories to each other, and soon an argument breaks out over who sleeps in the supposedly safest middle of the tent. This segment makes a few self-mocking references to horror movie cliches a la Scream and offers some nice plot twists at the end (although nothing original really).

Saving the best for last, the dessert Last Fright by Shutter and Alone co-director Parkpoom Wongpoon leaves you asking for more after the end of the movie. When a Princess suddenly dies in a foreign land, a flight attendant is assigned to escort her body home on a charter flight, all on her own somehow. Suffice it to say the Princess harbors a hatred for the air hostess that transcends death. This is basically the classic haunted house setup albeit miles high in the air, but this final part manages to amp up the dread and deliver the best scares out of the 4.