Homestay

A boy dies and his spirit waits somewhere. An offer is made to him: he will enter the body of a young man who has just killed himself and within a hundred days find out why he died. If he finds it he will go on living; if not, both will cease. He enters the body. He begins the life of a schoolboy called Min: the family, the school, the friends and the girl he loves. Nobody notices that anything has changed. Parkpoom Wongpoom directs. The source is the Japanese novel by Eto Mori, which had been filmed in Japan before. The structure proceeds like an investigation; the spirit examines the life of the young man whose body he has taken as an outsider, and every new piece of information opens another suspicion. The subject is not suicide but how much the people around someone really knew him. Pressure from parents and school is treated directly; the examination system and expectation are the ground. Parkpoom Wongpoom is a known figure in Thai horror and moves here from horror into youth drama; the tone nonetheless stays dark. Its limit is the ending; the narrative raises the emotional pressure as it opens the secret and the resolution is too orderly. Who it is for: viewers who like Thai cinema and youth drama with fantastical elements. Who it is not for: the subject is heavy, the pace is slow, and the premise is familiar.