Don’t Come Home Review: Netflix Series That You Must Watch for its Ambitious and Far-Reaching Intentions?
Don’t Come Home Review: Netflix Series That You Must Watch for its Ambitious and Far-Reaching Intentions? - Filmyhype
Director: Thananuj Ebrahim
Date Created: 2024-11-01 18:01
3.5
Starring: Woranuch Bhirombhakdi, Pitchapa Phanthumchinda, Cindy Sirinya Bishop
Creators: Thananuj Ebrahim
Streaming Platform: Netflix
Filmyhype.com Ratings: 3.5/5 (three and a half stars)
Don’t Come Home, a Thai series, Original Netflix, 6 episodes, the story of a mother who notifies the police to find her daughter who has disappeared from the old house she has just returned to. But when the police start investigating, they find many mysteries that dig deep into the past of this house. Product classification needs reconsidering: Netflix’s Thai miniseries Don’t Come Home is billed as a horror. It’s not. It’s not even a science fiction miniseries, it’s more of a fantasy with a touch of supernatural thrillers. Netflix chose not to dub it, distributing it in its original language with subtitles. And the choice is a winning one.
Don’t Come Home Review: The Story Plot
A well thought out idea, combining the idea of wanting society to see the suffering and hardships of women caused by men, into a series that on the surface seems to be telling a ghost story, but when you watch it for a while, you will find that it is a series that tells a story of time travel, which serves the original idea very well. The series tells the story of a mother who flees her aggressive husband with her daughter to an old mansion in the middle of the forest where she used to live 30 years ago, before encountering a thrilling and mysterious event, and a loop that uses gimmicks and symbols, along with an intriguing storytelling style.
The series tries to make the story look fresh by telling itself from the advertisement from Netflix that “This is not a ghost”. The story starts with “Min and Wari”, a mother and 5-year-old daughter who ran away from her husband to live in her old house in the middle of the forest. Then, they immediately startle and scare the audience with a barrage of ghost scenes without hesitation. It feels like an attempt to force the audience to be scared. The ghost scenes in this story are a little strange. The strange red-eyed ghost that is not like a normal Thai ghost, the floating object scene that looks like a Western ghost phenomenon, and the time when the demon stops at 3 a.m. seem to use Western beliefs. A mysterious masked child runs around the house, which is a bit creepy to watch. But the use of jump scares too often makes the story look so-so. Even though these scenes are revealed later, it still seems too much.
But after that, in episodes 2-3, the story takes a different turn when ‘Fah’, a 6-month pregnant police officer, comes to investigate the case. She finds that Min’s testimony is full of suspicious irregularities. When she cannot confirm that she has a daughter, the film acts like a detective mixed with psychology, asking the question: did she not have a daughter in the first place? The story tries to set up a plot to trick the audience misleadingly, making many scenes seem unnatural for a detective, such as the role of Fah having an affair with her boss to get a promotion with blunt gossip. Min, who has been wearing a blood-stained shirt for two days hasn’t changed her clothes until the police are suspicious and have to ask for her shirt to do a DNA test, but in fact, the police saw her wearing this outfit for the first time. Or the gardener who says he hasn’t seen her boss’s daughter and acts sneaky. These scenes are done to intentionally trick the audience, making them feel like they are being tricked, no different from the jump scare scene in the first episode.
Don’t Come Home Review and Analysis
Don’t Come Home features many women as protagonists: Varee, little Min, pregnant policewoman Fah (Pitchapa Phanthumchinda) – who investigates Min’s disappearance, apparently lost in the woods – and Varee’s mother, the former owner of the house Panida (Cindy Sirinya Bishop), in flashbacks to the early 90s. Between the present and the past, the common thread is memories, but above all trauma. According to authors Woottidanai Intarakaset (who also directs) and Aummaraporn Phandintong, experiences mark our lives. But what marks them irremediably and determines their course are traumas: negative, dramatic, even tragic experiences. The connection between the present and the past becomes tangible, although unclear. It has no scientific basis, and that is why the Thai miniseries is much closer to a fantasy than to a work of science fiction or horror.
The photography is very suggestive, the setting of the old Western-style house dating back to 1932 that serves as the main setting for the story is full of charm. The narrative twists work, giving us the idea of a family saga as it happened and how it could have happened. At the heart of Don’t Come Home, in fact, are the “what ifs?”. What would have happened, in the lives of this entire family, if a seemingly banal and unnecessary event had been avoided? We ask ourselves this the whole time, while the cast gives excellent performances, which make a story based on a request for a good dose of suspension of disbelief. The desire to try to imitate Mike Flanagan’s style is clear, although the horror component typical of the works of the author of Hill House, Midnight Mass, and The Midnight ClubHill is absent here. Despite the obvious homage of a scene to Poltergeist.
But there is that romantic-idealistic, nostalgic, and moving aspect typical of Flanagan’s works. Of course: we are very far from a result comparable to those of the Netflix titles just mentioned, but the attempt is appreciable. Eastern productions prove that they are not the exclusive prerogative of South Korea, offering interesting products that keep the tension high throughout the narrative, until the final revelation that explains the title in an extremely significant moment from an emotional point of view. Recommended for those who are prepared to not know what to expect, and to believe in anything. The series changed direction in episode 4 to reveal the true story in another way. Although it looks exciting or wow that Thai content can do this, the blunt weakness of the script makes this change in direction create more problems for the story.
When the script has only points that make you wonder, what the heck? Full of many obvious loopholes and trying to make these scenes look reasonable with even more illogical methods. To the point that I wonder if the scriptwriter who is also the director just wants to do this style, so they find a way to force it in so bluntly. After that, the story plays with the idea that was set up from the beginning by retelling all the past events again. Even though it looks complete, smooth, and seamless, it is a story that the audience already knows. There are no more surprises. There are no twists to make the story have a different direction. Until watching, it feels like the characters in the story are suddenly full of stupid lines strung together rather than revealing anything impressive. Plus, the lines that reveal the title of the story seem very thoughtless with this character’s occupation. Because in reality, the character’s status could have changed this event a long time ago.
In addition to the many wounds in the story, the series also tries to tell about the oppression of 3 women in the story (played by Noon Woranuch, Pear Pitchapa, and Cindy Sirinya): Min who was abused by her military husband; Fah, a policewoman whose family is broken and who has an affair with her boss to get a promotion; Min’s mother who appears later with her family issues. The story puts these issues into the story straightforwardly and bluntly, without giving enough details for the audience to gradually understand. For example, Fah, who is this smart, has an affair with her boss. Until the moment she escapes from the issue of being bullied, it doesn’t feel like this is a stepping stone. Instead, it feels like she’s in more trouble than before due to her actions in the end with those powerful people.
The plot of this story seems to just drag men in military and police uniforms out to be humiliated and cursed at in a Thai formula that always makes bad people these types of people, using female characters as tools to express their feelings bluntly. It doesn’t work and I don’t get into it. The story also tries to involve the period of the military coup in the same format as the movie Cligenesis (afraid that people will forget these periods). It is something that the director has added in as an over-thinking idea that goes beyond the story, just because he wants to pass on knowledge to the audience about Thai political history.
Don’t Come Home Review: The Last Words
Don’t Come Home is the 6-episode Thai miniseries on Netflix that was mistakenly presented as a horror film. Instead, it is a fantasy with a touch of supernatural thriller, centered on a family saga that links the 90s to the present day of 2024. An almost entirely female story that tells us about maternal love, pain, and the inability to process grief. Suffering to the point of giving life to alternative realities. Science has little to do with it here: it is as if the need of one of the protagonists gave rise to an inexplicable phenomenon that is destined, however, to influence the lives of her descendants. An evocative setting and excellent photography, combined with convincing performances, do the rest: Don’t Come Home works. As long as you don’t expect a horror film.
