Horror Extreme Movie Review - Art of the Devil

Art of the Devil (Khon len khong) is a 2004 supernatural horror movie from Thailand and is Tanit Jitnukul's first attempt at directing a horror movie. The horror in this movie comes from the black arts and the storyline is based around the occult and witchcraft.

The story begins (in black and white for dramatic effect) with a panic stricken Nan, played by Arisa Wills, running around her opulent family home. She finds her mother on her bed spewing blood then her little brother, Bon, in a bloody mess on his bed. The phone rings and the person at the other end is trying to warn Nan, "Get out of the house now! Your sister-in-law is the one!" Her sister-in-law, Boom (played by Supakson Chaimongkol) then appears and knocks her out, ties her up and makes a cup of tea!

We then rewind to the past where we begin to discover Boom's motives for terrorising the family. Boom has an affair with a wealthy business man called Pratan and ends up pregnant, not wanting the scandal Pratan tries to pay Boom off, but then decides that he owns her and the baby and lets three of his friends rape her! She won't let it end this way and later confronts him in front of his family and demands more money, he takes her outside and slaps her around a bit, throws money at her and tells her to stay away from his family.

Six months later the three rapist friends and their families are dead and investigations suspect that witchcraft is involved, when Pratan and his family die under similar circumstances his fortune is passed on to his ex-wife, the mother of Nan. Feeling that she deserves the fortune and devastated with the loss of her unborn baby in a car accident, Boom plots to marry into Nan's family and inherit the wealth with the help of her witchdoctor friend.

This movie was not tremendously gory, the voodoo dolls were often filled with foreign objects such as razor blades and eels which the victims would soon be vomiting (and dying in the process). The movie tried to rely on the supernatural element to convey the horror with the various evil spells plus the weird looking ghost of Boom's unborn daughter haunting the family, but unfortunately it failed due to lack of suspense. The movie was good but it did not conjure up the usual sense of terror that horror movies from Asia so often do. The acting seemed quite poor and nothing about the story truly amazed me although it was executed in a way that kept me engaged to the end.