Phi Phong: The Blood Demon

There is nothing more effective, in my opinion, than a beautifully captured image of nature in all its grandeur as the backdrop for a supernatural horror film. Perhaps it has something to do with the vastness of an untamed landscape: hidden, forbidden, untouched, and keeping secrets from humankind.

Picture this: mist settles over a sparsely wooded clearing. Your vision extends no more than twenty metres in any direction, while the shifting fog plays tricks on your eyes, playing hide and seek with your surroundings. Three people sit in a circle, communing with the spirit world, one with a white cloth draped over her head, another chanting. Your imagination plays tricks on you and you ask yourself why you would expose your fragile human body to a place so ancient and so susceptible to unseen forces.

These are the kinds of eerily perfect images you will be confronted with throughout Phi Phong: The Blood Demon, the film that became Vietnam's highest-grossing horror release of all time. Exquisitely shot, with sweeping landscapes that capture both the majesty and isolation of Vietnam's remote highlands, the film is a visual triumph with its exceptional costume design and committed performances.

It tells the story of a family of shamans: a mother and her two adult children, all gifted with supernatural powers. Living in Vietnam's lowlands, the siblings are summoned to the remote highlands after receiving alarming news about their mother, who had travelled there to perform a ritual. Something has gone terribly wrong. Upon arriving in the isolated mountain village, they find a community gripped by fear as a series of increasingly sinister events begins to unfold. Across cultures and religions, there is a belief that humans aren't the only intelligent sentient beings inhabiting this world. These unseen presences go by countless names; spirits, demons, ghosts… Some are good, some are bad, but the worst are the ones seeking vengeance.

Phi Phong: The Blood Demon spends its first half employing many of the traditional conventions of supernatural horror: hauntings, possessions, rituals, magic, the summoning of the dead, and the fear of unseen forces. It also resurrected one of my own childhood fears: the ghostly figure of a woman with long, tangled black hair obscuring her face, dressed in a tattered white nightgown. More than once, I found myself holding my notebook in front of my face, using it as a shield in the first half of the film, debating whether I should leave. But I stayed, and I’m glad I did because the second half shifts the gear to thriller.

While the film does not introduce ground-breaking new ideas, it is nevertheless a thoroughly well-crafted piece of filmmaking. Its narrative is tightly structured, the mystery unfolds at a satisfying pace, and its characters are given enough depth to keep you invested beyond the scares. My only beef? It could easily have been split into two films to give the twists of the second half more room to breathe.