A girl is having some kind of relationship with a married rich guy, but is dumped when she tells him that she's pregnant. He pays her one million bath for her to have an abortion, but later invites some of his friends to rape her while he's taping the whole thing on camera. He tells her that the reason why he did this, was to get his money's worth, and naturally, she hates his for what he did and wants revenge. The girl seek out some kind of witch-doctor, and with his help, she puts a curse on the whole family with the use of black magic.
Art Of The Devil is a Thai horror flick that has its ups and downs, unfortunately the downs weigh way more heavier. While Thailand has become more and more present in the Asian horror market over the years, the movies seem to shift greatly between being really good, (like Shutter), to being completely terrible. I wouldn't say that Art Of The Devil is a completely terrible flick, it's looks pretty good, has decent acting, but does unfortunately not make it at all in a horror point of view.
I felt that the main problem with Art Of The Devil was that it was too messy at times, a bit confusing, and never generated the proper suspense that it sure could've needed. I had a really hard time getting into the movie, and I was actually so uninterested an hour into the film, that I had to turn it off and watch the last remaining half-hour the next day. It's of course never a good sign when you have to divide a movie into two viewings, but to its defense, I can say that I was extremely tired the first time I tried to watch it. Still, if it would've been really interesting, I would of course have watched the whole thing at once.
 
The first 20 minutes or so were pretty good, and I had no problem whatsoever getting into the flick. I wanted to like it, just like I want to like every movie I see, problem is just that it doesn't happen nearly as often as I want it to. It starts off quite interesting with this cute girl who falls for this rich guy, and things seem to go well until she tells him that she's carrying his child. The guy offer her a large sum of money, and there seems to be nothing more to it. But later on, one night, his friends come by and tries to rape her while the guy's taping the whole thing "to get his money's worth". On one hand, this is of course a terrible thing, but it also makes you care about what's going on, and so, makes you get into the movie.
It's natural that the girls wants revenge for what the guy did, but when she seek out a witch-doctor and this whole black magic thing starts, the film somewhat becomes a mess. It has some cool and pretty gruesome scenes, but not nearly enough or that is effective enough for one to get scared. There's also some blond ghost girl kid showing up every now and then, and she looks way more ridiculous than scary. Actually, all the scares failed miserably to deliver, and the only thing that did deliver was one scene when a room and a guy was covered in eels, and some other scene that had a little gore. But that wasn't nearly enough to satisfy considering one had to sit through a lot of boring and uninteresting things during the whole movie.
While the cover looks close to being awesome, the movie's far from being as cool, so don't be fooled by the cover. The acting was pretty ok, not great but not bad either, and maybe felt a little bit stiff at times, but no real complaints when it comes to the acting. The movie looked quite slick, the score was good and there was some decent gore to be found, but it's not a movie to watch for the gore. The overall story lacked suspense, and did not manage to stay interesting all the way through. Scares was really nowhere to be found. Not bad, but still below average.
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ALTERNATIVE TITLE: Khon len khong
MOVIE YEAR: 2004
DIRECTOR: Tanit Jitnukul
WRITING CREDITS: Ghost Gypsy
GENRE: Horror
CAST: Supakson Chaimongkol, Arisa Will, Somchai Sathutham
COUNTRY: Thailand
RUNTIME: 96 min
RATING: 4/10
Art Of The Devil Website/IMDB Click here
Art Of The Devil Trailer Click here
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