The Coffin (2008)

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

It isn't all that great, actually. Really cheesy and very predicable of how certain scenes are gonna turn play out. However, I guess that's the charm of it all, because I would consider this one of my guilty pleasures.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

The Coffin started out great, promised a lot of potential, scares and quite possible a lovely twist on top. Sadly, that old saying "a job well started is a job half done" does not apply here, cause I have to say, this one is a real downer. So, why did The Coffin fail so bad? Well, it is a tad bit too slow, not unusual for such productions but still, and the way it heads to the end, it's just not interesting and annoying at times. I mean, we can kinda anticipate the twist if you are used with such movies, so why drag this along? Get there and do try to act more like a horror film, show some scares, create some tension, make better use of your surround noises! Anyway, it doesn't look like they tried to hard, I think it was a great idea that was not fully exploited, resulted in a half baked scrip and put on screen with no real intention of actually making another great horror that will remain up there, with the rest!This one will seem long, boring and almost kinda useless. It should have done better. They had all the ingredients! Cheers!

In Thailand, there are people that believe that is they lay down in a coffin they would cheat death and bring good luck. The bride Sue Wong (Karen Mok) leaves her fiancé Jack (Andrew Lin) in Hong Kong expecting to heal her lung cancer and she is well succeeded; however Jack dies. The skeptic Chris (Ananda Everingham) also participates in the ceremony to help his beloved Mariko (Aki Shibuya). However he panics with the claustrophobic situation and dies for 6 minutes and 42 seconds. They have weird visions of ghosts and strange things happen with them. Sue and Chris visit Professor Thanachai (Micheal Pupart) that advised them that they should repeat the burial to resolve their issues and stop the curse."The Coffin" is a messy film that begins with horror and ends like a soap-opera, with the encounter of Chris and May. The dialogs are confused and maybe westerns are lost in translation and difference of culture. The truth is that the plot is a mess and hard to understand. My vote is four.Title (Brazil): "O Caixão" ("The Coffin")

It's quite clear right from the start that the director is out to make a stylish movie, what with everything looking blue like he taped cellophane over the camera lens. I suppose artistic style can be used to create a mood of suspense for a horror movie if done right, but here it just makes everything look bleak.Fortunately, not every shot is blue, and the director does provide the usual ba-dumm moments, though none exceptional. The movie was mostly a bore, with style over substance, and the only pleasant surprise I got from it was Ananda Everingham's delightful British accent, though I guess it shouldn't have been a surprise because of his name. Karen Mok, cool as she is, didn't really bring much to the movie (though I doubt she could've).

Original Asian films like Ringu have set the bar for psychological horror movies that are deeply unsettling without resorting to gore and blood. Along comes a wave of similar Asian horror movies of discontented long-haired female ghosts in white gown, only to fail in their imitation. Just like The Coffin.This movie seems novel with the inspiration from the Thai practice of lying in a coffin to change one's luck. However, it starts out slow, and never changes its pace. It's boring, lacklustre and tries way too hard to create symbolic meanings.The supposed twist at the end is nothing new, nor is the long-haired female ghost that seems too familiar.The dialogues are painful, so are the executions of them by the mediocre cast. This is what you get for casting people for their looks.