3AM (2012)

Genre: Horror/Thriller
Director: Patchanon Thumajira, Kirati Nakintanon, Issara Nadee
Cast: Apinya Sakuljaroensuk, Focus Jeerakul, Vivid Bavornkiratikajorn, Thanawat Prasitthisomporn, Nayapak Bhumisak, Iirah Wimonchailerk (Tony), Kanklao Duaysianklao (Grace), Peter Knight, Shahkrit Yamnarm, Ray Macdonald, Prachakorn Piyasakulkaew, Toeyhom Kanyarin
RunTime: 1 hr 36 mins
Rating: M18 (Some Mature Content and Violence)
Released By: Clover Films and Cathay-Keris Films
Official Website:

Opening Day: 6 December 2012

Synopsis:  Thailand’s latest horror is made up of three chilling and stomach-churning stories... ghosts, demons and vengeful spirits are all out to haunt at 3AM, the scariest hour of the night.

In a wig shop crammed with lifeless heads of dolls, something turns out to be not really lifeless… Mint and May are sisters from a wig-making family, the two can’t get along but were made to man the shop while their parents went out of town. Their nightmare came alive when May unknowingly acquired hair of a dead person….

In a stranger’s house with a dark history, two corpses lie peacefully, side by side… Tos is assigned to take care of Mike and Cherry - a couple killed in an accident just before their wedding. Their parents decide to keep their corpses, as the couple loved each other so much – and their parents still treating them as if they were still alive. With Tos spending all his time with the corpses, he soon falls in love with the dead, but beautiful Cherry… what will this twisted love leads too?

In the middle of the night, the office is as deserted as a graveyard, strange things happen… Karan and Tee are owners of a company whose office is in building rumoured to be haunted. The two aren’t scared, and actually enjoyed playing pranks on their staff who work late at night. But soon, the pranksters are no longer certain if the strange things that happened in the office are their game – or someone else’s…

Movie Review:

There was a time not too long ago when Thai horror movies used to stand for something; these days however, even the occasional one that reaches our shores is hardly worth your time. ‘Dark Flight’ earlier this year was one good example, and here to prove once again that the heydays of Thai horror are all but over is this latest anthology of three short stories set around what is supposed to be the spookiest time of the night.

In what is a foreboding sign of just how much to expect from the compendium, Patchanon Thammajira's “The Wig” gets the movie off to a tepid start. The premise shows promise – a vengeful spirit follows her snipped locks to a wig shop looked after by two bickering sisters, May and Mint, while their parents have gone on vacation. The older and more responsible May places her attention squarely on the business; while the bratty and playful Mint seems concerned only about what spot she and her friends will be spending the night partying at.

That very night the tresses are delivered, Mint decides to invite her friends over; but when one of her equally irreverent friends makes fun of said wig, its owner takes revenge by going after each of them one by one. The kills are bloody all right, but this short has nothing to offer beyond that. There is little we know about the ghost, nor about the characters for that matter, so why we should care about either’s predicament is necessarily suspect. If there is any consolation, it is that the artificial time limit imposed on each one of these stories ensures that the futility of the proceedings doesn’t drag on.

So the next one we are made to bear with is Kirati Nakintanon’s ‘The Corpse Bride’ (not a live-action version of the Tim Burton animation mind you), where a caretaker of a sprawling mansion which has just witnessed the deaths of a young wedded couple gets more than he bargains for. When the former goes against advice and enters the deceased couple’s bedroom with impunity, you can already guess that there won’t be a pretty ending in store for him.

Despite its pedestrian story, Nakintanon tries to spice things up by hinting at some form of erotic human-ghost romance when the caretaker takes an instant liking to the dead but beautiful bride. Unfortunately, the eroticism – presumably to keep the movie below the bounds of adult classification – is too mild to get much of a reaction. What’s worse is the laughably bad execution, further exacerbated by an unconvincing twist that easily makes this the worst one of the three.

Then for a while it seems Isara Nadee might be poised to deliver the best of the lot with ‘O.T.’, a satire that pokes fun at employees who deliberately slack off during the day and work late into the night to claim overtime pay. At one such company whose name ‘Ortho GraphyT’ riffs on that of the short, its two bosses have decided to teach two such conniving employees a lesson by staging a series of spooky encounters to frighten them home. Alas the two employees in question turn out to be smarter than their bosses make them out to be, counter-‘Punking’ them in what eventually becomes an increasingly tiresome game of back and forth pranks – until, as you would probably guess, it turns a sudden turn for the serious.

The self-aware attitude that Nadee injects into the material is a welcome break from the seriousness of the earlier two shorts; unfortunately, Nadee doesn’t know where to stop, so much so that the string of pranks become too illogical and repetitive to be smart or, for that matter, interesting. By trying too hard and too long to be clever, what starts off intelligent becomes smart-alecky and self-indulgent; and when it finally decides to get serious, you no longer care anymore. If it remains the best out of the three, it is only because its two other genre relatives are just consistently bad and it is only half so.

And as a feature made for 3D (though that format is not being screened in cinemas here), there are the obligatory shots where something or someone reaches out at you. Such gimmicks might have worked in the past, but given the deluge of 3D flicks of late, a movie that uses the technology for quick audience gratification is simply juvenile. That said, if a movie is not worth watching without the extra dimension, it seldom is with – and ‘3 A.M.’ is an excellent case in point.

With such drivel like ‘3 A.M.’, it is no wonder that the Thai horror movie has long lost its allure. The surest indication that any horror film is grasping at straws is when it starts resorting repeatedly to ‘boo-scares’ to offer something frightening to its audience – ‘3 A.M.’ is unfortunately packed with plenty of such embarrassing moments. 

Movie Rating:

(Not one of this anthology of three stories can save this Thai horror flick from being a perfectly disposable entry that is low on genuine scares)

Review by Gabriel Chong