Nang Nak

Nang Nak by Nonsee Nimibutr (1999) is a Thailand horror movie based on an ancient Thailand legend which spoke about a female ghost Nak’s undying love towards her husband, which entailed her lingering spirit by her husband Mak’s side and eventually, wrecking lives in the village when there were attempts to inform Mak that Nak is actually a ghost.



Stories of female ghosts lingering on in the living realm out of the pure yearning just to stay by the side of their loved ones can be found in several Asian cultures, from what I can remember, the movie Ugetsu by Kenji Mizoguchi (1953) (in which the ending scene the spirit of wife Miyagi telling her husband Genjuro that “I did not die. I am at your side.”) and also stories from the collection of Liaozhai Zhiyi (聊斋志异, in which the author wrote about the faithful love between beautiful female ghosts and their lovers/husbands in the third story theme of the collection).

Female ghosts are the archetype of Asian horror movies and they usually garner sympathy from the audience despite the vengeance they wreck, and in cases of their spiritual lingering in the human earth stemming for the love they have towards their families and loved ones, I personally feel even greater sympathy and sorrow for the ghosts. They are no longer human, but their love is what that makes them humane, even more so for a wife/mother’s love for her family.

While watching Nang Nak, I wasn’t too terrified by the scare factors in the movie, yet I certainly felt the grief Nak had when she had to finally leave her husband Mak at the end, when the exorcism was to be carried out by the old monk. I loved the audio the director employed, the woodwind melodies which were gently hummed along by a female voice accentuated the ambience of the movie.

Ost. Nang Nak



References:
Nang Nak – IMDb
Mae Nak - A Thai Ghost Story
Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio – Wikipedia
Ugetsu Ending Scene