Nang Nak

The film is set in a village near Bangkok in the nineteenth century. Mak is called to war and leaves behind his pregnant wife Nak. He is badly wounded, spends a long time recovering and finally comes home. His wife and their newborn child are waiting for him in the house. The villagers try to tell Mak something, but something happens to the ones who do. What Mak sees at home and what the village knows are not the same thing. The story rests on Thailand's best-known ghost legend, the tale of Mae Nak Phra Khanong, and has been filmed many times. Nonzee Nimibutr's version puts love and a grief that will not end ahead of the horror; Nak is not a frightening figure but someone who refuses to let go. It became the first Thai production to pass a hundred million baht and reached about a hundred and fifty million in all, and it is treated as the start of a new period in the country's cinema. Its photography and period design were markedly different from Thai films up to that point.