THIS REVIEW CONTAINS MINOR SPOILERS.
by Jarrod Jones. Vengeful ghosts are constantly popping out of the damndest things. The Ring had a vindictive child wraith crawling out of a tv set. There’s a specter who knows the intricacies of Facebook bullying in Unfriended. Cracked, the feature film debut of Thai director Surapong Ploensang, has something angry and dead haunting a pair of seamy oil paintings. Finally, a ghost with some taste.
The premise of Cracked, which originates from a previously unused Korean screenplay retrofitted to a Thailand setting, follows Ruja (Chayanit Chansangavej), a single mother out of cash and desperate to scrounge some up for her daughter’s expensive eye surgery. The cherubic Rachel (Nina Nutthacha Jessica Padova) directs her fading gaze at Ruja after another failed begging session. “Mommy, am I going to be blind?” Talk about pressure.
As luck would have it, Ruja’s father was Pakorn (Byron Bishop), an artist of some controversial renown who’s died and bequeathed her a mansion and his studio, which currently holds two paintings of a gilded woman bound provocatively by serpents and silk. They’re said to be worth a fortune. (Leaving behind estates and sordid artifacts for their kids to deal with, that’s dead parents for you.) Ruja’s money problems seem to be at an end; all she has to do is hire a restoration artist named Tim (K-pop darling Nichkhun) to get those pesky cracks around the woman’s eyes repaired, sell the pieces to an interested buyer, and Rachel will, at last, have her surgery.
Of course, this being a horror movie, you know things won’t work out that way. Ruja’s return to Thailand after a long time away in New York City dredges hard feelings and nightmarish memories. Before she makes her fateful trip back home, a specter visits Ruja in a dream — or, at least, we’re made to think it’s a dream. Either way, this is the first of the film’s several indulgent jump-scares, but this one is effective because we don’t yet know the nature of the ghost or its reasons for haunting this poor beleaguered mom. Here’s an apparition that knows how to set a tone.
Cracked is a standard-issue spook show that’s more interested in teasing out jolts than making us care about its characters. Rachel’s impending blindness evokes sympathy at first, but it’s later tossed to the side. Ruja’s domestic issues and whatever relationship she’s supposed to have with Tim are frustratingly vague. Ploensang does seem to get a kick out of themes — here the concept of sight, or the deliberate choice not to see, is what barely holds this together — but the screenplay, which had to have gone through several translations during its multinational production, doesn’t put them to work. (This was backed by producers from Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, and Thailand.) Even Ruja seems to forget why she’s here by the end.
At least Pakorn’s paintings are interesting to look at, and their in-story origins are effectively unsettling. Sometimes fine art created whole-cloth for a film’s production can be dopey or uninteresting. Toey Jaruwateekul, the film’s production designer, works Gustav Klimt into these portraits, an elegant approach for this material that gives the movie a golden, sultry veneer and a disturbing inner life. They contrast with Ploensang and cinematographer Natdanai Naksuwan’s perpetually dour, rain-soaked visuals, and thank goodness for that. After all, good art should enhance our experience. The art in Cracked enhances Cracked.
But even a haunted painting needs something substantial to hang itself on — just ask that picture of Dorian Gray. A stronger focus on Pakorn’s lurid history, the way his cruel treatment of models — and Ruja’s mother — emotionally shattered his family and pushed Ruja to the United States might have spun sinister gold. For a movie that is, in part, about the sensuality of art and the wild things some artists do to hone their craft, Cracked is curiously repressed. All its sinful story beats — i.e., the interesting stuff — are stashed away in its silly and truncated final third, where the film’s surprise villain winds up having a stretched canvas smashed over their head for their transgressions. Even in revenge horror, everyone’s a critic.
5 out of 10
Cracked premieres via VOD and DVD on May 26.
Directed by Surapong Ploensang.
Written by Eakasit Thairaat, Onusa Donsawai, Pun Homchuen, and Surapong Ploensang.
Cinematography by Natdanai Naksuwan.
Starring Chayanit Chansangavej, Nichkhun, Sahajak Boonthanakit, Nina Nutthacha Jessica Padova, and Byron Bishop.
Produced by Choi Yeonu, Hye Rim Oh, Meo Boontamcharoen, and Naam Lakkana Palawatvivhai.
Not Rated. Features ghostly body horror and some risky kink. Thai with English subtitles.
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