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Beyond the Vampire:
Revamping Thai Monsters for the Urban Age
Katarzyna Ancuta
King Mongkut's Institute of Technology Ladkrabang, Thailand
Abstract
This article revisits two of the most iconic Thai monstrosities, phi pop and phi krasue,
whose changing representation owes equally as much to local folklore, as to their
ongoing reinterpretations in popular culture texts, particularly in film and television.
The paper discusses two such considerations, Paul Spurrier’s P (2005) and Yuthlert
Sippapak’s Krasue Valentine (2006), films that reject the long-standing notion that
animistic creatures belong in the countryside and portray phi pop and phi krasue’s
adaptation to city life. Though commonplace, animistic beliefs and practices have
been deemed incompatible with the dominant discourses of modernization and
urbanization that characterise twenty-first century Thailand. Creatures like phi pop
and phi krasue have been branded as uncivilised superstition and ridiculed through
their unflattering portrayals in oddball comedies. This article argues that by inviting
these monsters to relocate to contemporary Bangkok, Spurrier and Sippapak
redefine their attributes for the modern urban setting and create hybrids by blending
local beliefs and cinematic conventions. The creatures’ predatory character is
additionally augmented by the portrayal of the city as itself vampiric. The article
therefore reads these predatory spirits in parallel with the metaphor of the female
vampire – a sexually aggressive voracious creature that threatens male patriarchal
order and redefines motherhood.
Keywords: phi pop, phi krasue, monsters, evil spirits, Thai horror film, the monstrous feminine
f we define the vampire as an undead revenant sustained by consuming (preferably
human) blood, then it is safe to say there are no vampires in Thailand. This does not
mean, however, that Thai monster1 lore is free of beings that could be called “vampiric”,
in a sense that they need to feed off humans to survive. The two most culturally widespread
examples include phi pop and phi krasue, creatures with an appetite for viscera and abject
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1 The term “monster” is used rather loosely in the paper to refer to a corporeal creature that inspires
fear. In the words of Judith Halberstam: “The monster functions as monster […] when it is able to
condense as many fear-producing traits as possible into one body” (1995, p. 22). Since both phi pop
and phi krasue can be at the same spiritual and corporeal creatures, they are simultaneously spirits and
monsters.
I
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bodily discharges like menstrual blood, placenta, or excrement. For foreign scholars, phi pop
and phi krasue are notoriously difficult to describe. They certainly defy Western terminology
of ghosts, spirits, monsters and demons, but at the same time, exhibit features characteristic
of all the above. They complicate our understanding of the supernatural, since while they could
easily be described as extraordinary or superhuman, in animistic Thailand, they are
considered very much part of the natural world. And given the fact that they are also commonly
perceived as real, it is not always possible to call them fantastic or imaginary.2 For the sake of
clarity, this paper proposes to read phi pop and phi krasue as vampiric (but not vampires),
while noting that their “undead” (i.e. immortal) status is achieved through a type of
spiritual/demonic possession (voluntary or involuntary), rather than reanimating the dead.
Both phi pop and phi krasue are known to enter the living body of a host, predominantly a
woman who dabbled in black magic, inherited the “curse” from her ancestors, or became
infected by swallowing another creature’s saliva, and reconstitute this body for its purposes.
This is spectacularly visible in the case of phi krasue as the creature suffers nightly separations
of the head from the body, where the head then flies away into the night in search of food,
drawing a bloody trail of its entrails behind it. The term phi pop or phi krasue is therefore used
indiscriminately to refer to the spirit, its human carrier, and any intermediate forms it assumes.
Anthropological accounts of phi pop and phi krasue are full of contradictions, their precise
classification practically impossible, since they are known by several overlapping names in
different regions of Thailand and their characteristics merge with those of other phi.3 They are
both commonly identified as “evil spirits” a person gets possessed by, or turns into, as
punishment for “the breaking of taboos associated with malevolent forms of magic” (Baumann,
2016, p. 154). They are often thought to be hereditary: phi krasue can only die after she
convinces a female relative “to eat some of her spittle” (Irwin, 1907, p. 25) and become krasue
in her place, and phi pop moves on to inhabit the children (from father to son, from mother to
daughter) after its original host dies of old age (Suwanlert, 1976a, p. 69). Phi pop can
additionally originate in auspicious objects, from which they transfer to humans (p. 69). At the
same time, since they are mostly seen in their corporeal form, they are also perceived as
monsters in addition to spirits. An amalgamation of human and spirit, phi pop and phi krasue
are inherently dualistic creatures – the term referencing simultaneously the spiritual/demonic
entity and its host – a confusing combination of a victim, container, and a masterful witch. Phi
pop and phi krasue tend to live as humans by day (again it is debatable whether they are
humans containing the spirit within or spirits masquerading as humans) and engage in
supernatural activities by night, at which point they are often thought to be separate from their
hosts, although somehow retaining their material form. They are also predominantly gendered
beings – phi krasue is always female, appearing “as an old ugly woman, a beautiful young
maiden or ordinary village girl” (Baumann, 2014, p. 184), and though phi pop is often thought
to be shapeless and can possess men and women alike, its most memorable representations
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2 While it may be tempting to compare phi pop and phi krasue to similar Southeast Asian beings, it
would be difficult to treat them as equivalent. Phi krasue, for instance, may share many characteristics
with the Filipino manananggal, Malay penanggalan, or Indonesian leak but they are certainly not the
same. Such comparisons are also of limited use when describing these creatures in English.
3 Most commonly translated as “spirits,” the Thai word phi can also refer to ghosts (i.e. dead humans),
demons (i.e. evil immaterial spirits), or monsters (corporeal creatures).
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are similarly female, perhaps because women are said to be uniquely predisposed to being
invaded by spirits due to their weak or disorganised khwan – vital essence (Kirsch, 1977, pp.
258-259)
While phi pop often mimics its host and phi krasue hunts in a semi-complete form of a
detached head with entrails, both entities are also capable of entering their victim’s body and
feeding on its organs from within, causing illness and death. They are characterised by their
voracious appetite (usually for things raw and disgusting to humans) and the inability to stop
themselves from eating, which is why they end up consuming people even though they prefer
to stay away from them to avoid detection. Although usually feasting on “faeces (khi), carrion
and livestock” (Baumann, 2016, p. 155), attracted by the smell of blood, phi krasue is thought
to be particularly dangerous to women in childbirth, entering their bodies to eat the entrails of
the baby and thus causing stillbirth. Afterwards, she continues to feed on the innards of the
mother, causing her waste away with illness until she dies (Rajathon, 1954, p. 158). Phi pop’s
consumption of its host from within similarly manifests itself as physical or mental illness.
Suwanlert compared the symptoms of possession to a dissociative disorder and diagnosed it
as hysterical neurosis (1976b, p. 21). Phi pop is also said to be able to temporarily leave the
body of its host and possess another (p. 21), just as it can be sent out with a deliberate
intention to harm others (Irwin, 1907, p. 13). While the originating hosts are usually driven
away to live in exile, phi pop can sometimes be exorcised by incantations or, more drastically,
beaten out of the afflicted person with a magic rod, after which the person continues to live a
regular life (Rajathon, 1954, p. 164).
Like many Thai animistic beings, phi pop and phi krasue have traditionally been associated
with the wilderness, from which they moved into the bordering villages to live among humans.
As the villagers began to migrate to Bangkok for work, so did their monsters, though they did
not get much of a welcome in the city. Although individual beliefs prevailed, animistic practices
were officially rejected as “uncivilised” relics of the barbaric past incompatible with the
dominant discourses of modernization and urbanization. Creatures like phi pop or phi krasue
were deemed incapable of change and urban adaptation. This is not to say that Bangkok did
not have its dark side. Like any metropolis with growing potential for accidents and crime, it
was quickly filling up with vengeful spirits of the violently dead. Unable to compete as the
figures of fear, upon entering the city many animistic beings embraced the spirit of capitalism
instead, giving rise to a series of prosperity cults where they got busy securing lucrative
business contracts, disclosing lucky lottery numbers, and helping people make money in
exchange for offerings and veneration. This polarisation was reflected in popular media like
film and television, which began to feature indigenous Thai spirits/monsters in oddball
comedies set in the backward countryside, in contrast with more serious globalised urban
vengeful ghost stories that felt more “appropriate” for Bangkok. Recently, however, we have
witnessed the appearance of new hybrid monstrosities redefining the seemingly
unchangeable Thai animistic beings and reframing them in modern urban settings. This paper
discusses two such cases, Paul Spurrier’s film P (2005), and Yuthlert Sippapak’s Krasue
Valentine (2006), which portray phi pop and phi krasue’s adaptation to city life. The article
argues that the urban versions of these monsters are hybrids blending local beliefs and
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cinematic conventions, and that their predatory character is augmented by the portrayal of the
city as itself vampiric.
“I won’t eat you from the inside”: Phi pop as a sex worker in P
Do you know what I do? I enter your body and I work my way through. I eat your
kidneys, the liver, the spleen, the heart, the lungs. But I’m not going to do that to
you. I won’t eat you from the inside. I’m going to eat you from the outside! It’ll be just
as tasty (P, 2005).
The film’s protagonist, Dau (initially Aaw) is a girl from Si Saket province in Lower Isan. She
is a lonely child, ostracized by others. Dau lives at the edge of the village with her spooky
grandmother, who is proud to identify as Khmer, since they “know things not many Thai people
know.” The “things” in question are the reference to (black) magic the Khmer are commonly
associated with in Thailand. Khmer magic is believed to be especially potent, it is also perhaps
the most unnerving, as the ingredients used in its rituals often include “the mixing of abjected
bodily substances, like menstrual blood, excrements and corpse remnants, with sacred
knowledge” (Baumann 2016, p. 163). As a descendant of a witch, Dau learns magic, the
practice of which comes with three restrictions: she is not allowed to eat raw meat, pass under
a clothesline, or take any payment for teaching others. If she breaks these rules, she risks her
body being taken over by an evil spirit, which the director, Paul Spurrier identifies as phi pop:
the spirit that enters your body and gradually drives you crazy with a yearning for
innards, offal and all manner of viscera. If you see someone in Thailand eating raw
meat – ‘larb dip’ [lap dip] – rather more often than usual, you should watch out!
Before long their craving will grow, until soon they can change their form and enter
your body through any orifice and then proceed to eat you from the inside. The ‘phii
bawb’ [phi pop] is the particular ghoul that I chose for ‘P’ (Brown, 2005, 4, para. 14).
Given the creature’s description, locality, and Khmer origin, Baumann, however, argues that
the being described in the film, the Lower Northeastern variation of phi pop, is in fact a blend
of the Northeastern phi pop and Central Thai phi krasue, known to regional Khmer-speakers
as phi thamop. In Lower Northeastern Thailand, these three terms are often used
interchangeably to refer to the same creature that signifies a witch-like phi (2016, p. 154),
while in other regions phi krasue, phi pop and phi thamop are distinct beings with unique
characteristics.4
Regardless of its folklore characteristics and the prevailing belief that even in today’s Thailand
phi pop can be encountered in “real life,” the image of the creature constructed in the film is to
a large extent vampiric. Its hybrid nature reflects the fact that “[i]n an era of global capital,
filmmaking often must negotiate between the culturally nomadic and the culturally specific”
(Hudson, 2010, p. 206). This comes as no surprise, seeing as the entire film is very much a
cultural hybrid. Directed by a British director living in Thailand, the film was widely advertised
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4 Most of the anthropological texts related to phi pop describe the Northeastern Thai phi pop, while most
accounts of phi krasue focus on Central Thai phi krasue. This does not mean that these terms are
unknown in other regions of Thailand, however, they are frequently associated with a different set of
features.
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as “the first Thai [and Thai-language] film made by a westerner.” The portrayal of the
spirit/monster therefore owes equally much to Thai ghostlore, as to the cinematic conventions
used to portray the monstrous-feminine in horror films. In the film, the creature is shown to
leave Dau’s body and hunt for food. While Dau stays in bed troubled by nightmares, her
demonic doppelgänger goes on a rampage in another part of town. The monster’s body is an
array of signifiers (see Figure 1). The prominent fangs, shots showing its face in proximity of
the victim’s neck, and copious blood spillage represent the vampire. The bluish skin colour of
the creature and her glowing golden eyes evoke the image of the Hindu goddess of destruction
Kali, also a fanged being, but at the same time reference iconic representations of Thai ghosts
in post-war 16-mm horror films. The CG shots of human organs in decay, touched by disease,
reference the method of attack by phi pop and phi krasue. Then there is also a hint of an
apsara, a Cambodian shape-shifting female divinity often represented in Khmer art and court
dances (Baumann, 2014, p. 187), implied by Dau’s Khmer origin, but also the costumes she
wears when she dances on stage and the design of the bar incorporating crude renderings of
Khmer carvings.
Figure 1. Dau in her incarnation as phi pop (Spurrier, P, 2005)
The being that Dau becomes, or contains within herself, is a complex combination of three
common representations of the monstrous feminine, a category proposed by Barbara Creed
to highlight “the importance of gender in the construction of her monstrosity” (1993, p. 3). She
fits into Creed’s categories of woman as “possessed monster,” “vampire,” and “witch.” Each
of these beings is a figure of abjection: demonic possession transgresses the boundary
between the self and other (p. 32); the female vampire disrupts identity and order, but also
blurs the difference between dead and alive, human and animal (p. 61); while the witch “sets
out to unsettle boundaries between rational and irrational, symbolic and imaginary” (p. 76).
Although Creed’s model of the monstrous feminine can be criticised as Western-centric and
promoting cultural conceptualisations of gender that may be incompatible with Southeast
Asian realities, given the fact that in Thai patriarchal society women are expected to adhere
to strict gender roles and their agency is most frequently curbed by exercising control over
their sexuality, it is nevertheless relevant. As a product of Thai skewed gender and socio-
economic hierarchies which favour men over women, rich over poor, and Bangkok over the
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rest of the country, Dau is already potentially monstrous (and abject) because she is poor, she
belongs to a marginalised ethnic group, and comes from an underdeveloped rural province.
Her social class, material status and ethnicity delegate her to the “twilight zone,”
simultaneously invisible and threatening to the public image of a country focused on the urban
middle classes. The fact that in Thai films, impoverished provinces are filled with monsters is
not only a commentary on their supposed “backwardness”, but also the result of the national
mechanism of repression that chooses to ignore social problems like poverty or gender
inequality in order to maintain an illusion of a modern prosperous society.5
Like many of her peers, Dau comes to Bangkok lured by the promise of making money. She
works in a bar where she dances on stage, entertains foreign men, and sleeps with them for
an extra price. The film depicts sex workers as dualistic creatures, much like phi pop. They
are victims of circumstances: most of the girls come from impoverished provinces or Bangkok
slums and have turned to prostitution for economic reasons; they are further abused by their
criminal employers who profit from their work and keep them in debt; and they are also victims
of gender/racial exploitation stereotyping Asian women as sexual playthings for white men.
However, at the same time, the film does not dwell on their victimisation, but rather suggests
that the work they do is at least to some extent their active choice. Dau’s girlfriend, Pookie,
explains that their work is all about performance, as she sleeps with men for money despite
the fact that she identifies as a lesbian. She instructs Dau on how to manipulate their clients
and take advantage of them, and how to choose only the ones who “can afford her.” In this
new environment where everybody is feeding off somebody else, Dau’s monstrous
transformation goes unnoticed. After her transition, she becomes just another “predatory
bargirl” luring men to destruction, one more popular local creature demonised in foreigners’
travel stories from Thailand. Interestingly, however, the migration to the vampiric city is equally
transformative to Dau as it is to the phi pop which reinvents itself as a modern capitalist
monster that feeds on its victims for profit.
The binary nature of female monstrosities who are both pitiful victims of male abuse and
sexually aggressive predators is rather characteristic of Southeast Asian horror narratives.
One such figure, the Malay pontianak, is identified by Andrew Hock Soon Ng as an
amalgamation of ghost and vampire. As a ghost, she is a product and a melancholy reminder
of the systemic violence against women (a woman redeemed, since in death her honour is
restored), while as a vampire she is a dangerous rebel using her sexuality to threaten the
masculine social order (a female monster that needs to be destroyed). Ng observes that “the
vampire metaphor is utilized to comment on the schizophrenic identity of the Malay woman:
her tussle between autonomy and dependence, agency and subservience finds an excessive
expression through the potent, dangerous body of the vampire” (2010, p. 175). Although his
analysis is specifically related to women in Islamic culture, much of this is true in the Buddhist
context of Thailand, where patriarchy reigns supreme. In fact, it is the patriarchal positioning
of women in Thai culture, which restricts their access to the official Buddhist order (marked as
male) and describes them as more likely to interact with animistic beings, that has allowed
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5 The recent political upheaval and accompanying discourse on “uneducated low-class people” as a
destabilising element threatening the current power status in the country demonstrates the fear of the
rise of the discontented poor.
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women to gain authority as witches and spirit mediums (Ainslie, 2014, p. 162) and ironically
made them more likely to turn into phi pop or phi krasue. Dau’s lineage of sorcery, her
profession as a sex worker, engagement with witchcraft, and transformation into a female
vampiric monster simultaneously mark her as a “bad woman” and a threat to the dominant
social order (see Figure 2).
Figure 2. Dau-phi pop as a sexualised vampiric creature feeding on one of her customers (Spurrier, P,
2005)
Although the film’s depictions of monstrous female sexuality (aggressive, voracious,
manipulative, or lesbian) serve to “reinforce the phallocentric notion that female sexuality is
abject” (Creed, 1993, p. 151), at the same time, “the notion of the monstrous-feminine
challenges the view that femininity, by definition, constitutes passivity” (p. 151). This is
particularly visible in the way the film portrays male impotence in this vampiric world of women.
The shaman who attempts to exorcise the phi pop is defeated without much of a fight, his body
forcibly penetrated from behind by the monster. The owner of the bar who initiated Dau into
the vampiric sex business by forcing her to perform oral sex on him (contrasting “eating from
the outside” with “eating from the inside”) has his manhood devoured by a snake conjured by
Dau’s magic. The clients are treated instrumentally, as a source of income, or food for the
monster. The film is brutal in its portrayal of sex tourists and sexpats as unattractive and not
very intelligent. A shot of an old, flabby and extensively hairy foreigner on top of Dau is
accompanied by the voiceover of her grandmother warning her about turning into an ugly and
horrible creature. Minutes later, the same foreigner is eaten alive by Dau-phi pop in a reversed
shower scene from Psycho (1960).
While the film ultimately portrays men as weak, it suggests that female evil must be defeated
by a woman. The final challenge to the monster comes from a disfigured ex-dancer, Mai, who
invites the demon to consume her and commits suicide in the process. She jumps off an
overpass onto a busy road and ends up tossed onto a tree marked with colourful cloth to imply
it contains a female tree spirit, nang mai. Since Mai died a violent death, it is likely that her
ghost, phi tai hong, will move into the tree to share in the tree spirit’s veneration. In Thai
popular beliefs, nature spirits that are said to inhabit trees often blend with souls of the
deceased, especially those who die unexpected violent deaths in the vicinity. This is
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particularly common in the urban context where trees frequently mark the sites of car crashes.
Both the tree spirits and ghosts of the violently dead are thought to inhabit the tree and are
subsequently plied with offerings by the living. However, the ending of the film does not offer
closure. As we see Dau waking up from her dream we do not know whether the vampiric phi
pop is still a part of her. Chances are it will come back because phi are eternal and they live
on even if their hosts are long gone. Or perhaps the inclusion of the spirit tree in the scene
was meant to signal that the battle would now be fought between the good and evil phi. The
final shots of the film show Dau transformed from a shy virgin hiding behind a stage pole to a
confident erotic dancer as she returns to the stage. She has caused the deaths of four of her
co-workers and several clients, but she will always be welcome at the bar. Even if the
voracious spirit has left her, she has already become a different type of vampire all of her own.
“Do you say your prayers before going to sleep”: Phi krasue as an impossible mother
in Krasue Valentine
Do you say your prayers before going to sleep? No, never. You should. It earns you
a lot of merit…it will help you achieve redemption. […] What you are suffering from
cannot be cured by medicine. It can only be cured by merit. What am I suffering
from? Karmic retribution (Krasue Valentine, 2006).
The film’s heroine, Sao, owes her name to the first cinematic krasue portrayed in Krasue Sao
(1973), as if reminding us that this condition is hereditary. Saowadee is a nurse who has come
to seek employment at a small hospital in Bangkok. The hospital is old and practically empty,
because patients have moved on to more modern facilities. It is also decrepit, since its director
does not manage it properly. In fact, we learn he has gambled away all his money and the
hospital with it. The property includes a derelict gym, rusting away since its key has been lost;
a collection of overflowing dumpster bins; and a haunted house, which serves as Sao’s
bedroom. The hospital seems to have only one patient – a comatose Buddhist nun whose
entire purpose in the film is to dispose spiritual wisdom through an out-of-body experience.
The hospital’s dysfunctional staff include a limping cleft-faced porter, an effeminate clownish
night guard who sleeps on the job, and an old janitor who is a drunk. There is also a creepy
little girl who appears out of nowhere to sell roses that nobody wants to buy.
Sao feels inexplicably drawn to the disabled porter, Num. She is certain that the two of them
are connected, having found a faded photograph from 1941 of a couple that looks exactly like
them. The photograph, accompanied by a love poem, seems to promise that Sao has finally
found her soulmate. What Sao does not know, however, is that she is a krasue, something
the audience becomes aware of very early in the film as Sao’s floating head is seen
rummaging through rubbish (see Figure 3). Phi krasue is a “filth ghost”6 attracted to blood,
guts, and excrement; medical waste, therefore, must seem equivalent to a gourmet buffet.
Although we do not see the krasue eat, in the morning Sao wakes up with blood on her face,
indicating she has been drinking blood or devouring raw meat. She feels the urge to throw up,
(pointing to indigestion or possibly hinting at pregnancy) and right after purging she fishes out
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6 Although technically not a ghost, phi krasue has often been translated as a “filth ghost.”
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her vomit from the toilet bowl, producing a length of blood-soaked intestines, or perhaps an
umbilical cord. This is exactly what Baumann recognises as sok prok – impurity, filth, or “matter
out of place,” the fondness of which identifies phi krasue as a creature of the abject (2016, p.
154).
Despite her striking looks and peculiar diet, the krasue depicted in the film has little in common
with the creature studied by anthropologists. Although Sao came to Bangkok from
Aranyaprathet (a border town with Cambodia), hinting at the Khmer connection that Baumann
claims fits in with the origin myth of phi krasue, this is never fully explored and the creature’s
mythology is changed. The film merges her krasue characteristics with those of a ghost,
explaining her fate as linked to karmic retribution. People who accumulate too much bad
karma, we are told by one of the characters in the film, are expected to pay the karmic debt
over subsequent reincarnations. They sometimes “reincarnate into ghosts and demons” and
remain trapped in this state until they improve their condition through merit. Thai horror films
often turn to ghost stories to illustrate the concept of karmic retribution, although the typical
convention is to portray the ghost as a vengeful soul that does not want to relinquish its grudge
and thus clings to its own suffering. A classic example of such representation could be the
spirit of Natre from Shutter (2004) perched on the shoulders of the man who betrayed her in
the final scene of the film. She has avenged her pain and destroyed his life, but she has done
so at the cost of her own redemption. The ghostly return of Sao, however, is not motivated by
vengeance – at least not her own.
Figure 3. Sao haunting the hospital grounds in her phi krasue form (Sippapak, Krasue Valentine, 2006)
Sao, Num, and the director of the hospital, are trapped in a karmic circle of repetition destined
to face responsibility for their mistakes and meet a tragic end. Their previous lives were set in
1941. Back then, Num was a soldier recovering from a minor injury at the same hospital. Sao
and Num began dating. When Num left the hospital he promised to return for her, but then
chose to marry another woman to ensure his promotion instead. Sao found out she was
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pregnant. Distressed and alone, she aborted the baby. The director of the hospital was the
doctor who prescribed the abortion pills. All the three characters bear signs of bad karma:
Num is disabled, the director is a gambling addict, and Sao is phi krasue. In the course of the
film they additionally fall victims of the vengeful ghost of the aborted baby, which manifests
itself as a flower-selling girl or an old skinny man. This age/gender disparity suggests that
perhaps this is not the first time that Sao, Num and the director have been made to suffer for
their sins. In fact, one of the nurses mentions a female doctor who previously killed herself in
Sao’s room, perhaps bearing connection to the story. In the end, Num is strangled by his
ghost-child and becomes a ghost himself, the director dies of an acute allergic reaction to a
field of roses magically growing inside the derelict gym, and Sao gets trapped forever in her
krasue form, her body destroyed in a fire. The hospital, sold to a new owner, is about to get a
makeover, but it does not look like it is going to be free of its past.
Like Dau in P, Sao is clearly a hybrid: part ghost, part krasue, part human. The film director,
Yuthlert Sippapak is known for his genre-blending approach to filmmaking, in this case a
mixture of horror, comedy and romance. The ghost side of Sao triggers our empathy, as we
wonder whether her punishment is not too severe. It also vindicates the character to a certain
extent, as the first Sao’s abortion and potential suicide are at least partially blamed on men –
her lover who refused to take responsibility for the affair and the doctor who convinced her to
get rid of the baby. The krasue element in the film is an excuse to showcase oddball characters
who serve as comic relief as they aimlessly chase after the monster. This is rather typical of
Thai cinema, where phi krasue is commonly a source of ridicule and ghosts are simultaneously
scary and pitiful. At the same time, the very few attributes of phi krasue the film has retained
– Sao’s consumption of viscera and connection with motherhood and childbirth – also link her
with the mythology of the vampire (see Figure 4). In the film, Num asks why phi krasue likes
to eat baby entrails. Anthropological studies of shamanism and spirit possession reveal that
in many cultures menstrual blood, or placenta, are considered unclean, therefore
“[m]enstruating, pregnant, and parturient women are believed to be especially vulnerable to
the mischievous action of evil spirits” (Karim, 2003, p. 62). In Thai shamanic rituals, menstrual
blood is considered “the most dangerous pollutant…harmful to men and sacred objects”
(Patamajorn, 2007, p. 179) and “[t]he pollution of blood adheres to the female body and is
valued in the negative sense” (p. 180). Anders Poulsen also mentions the prevalence of beliefs
that spirits like phi pop, or phi krasue, pose a particular risk to women giving birth because
their weakened body often cannot withstand exorcism (2007, pp. 52-53). But for cultural
scholars, this connection is both much older and transcultural.
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Figure 4. The vampiric side of Sao as “the devourer of children” portrayed here after a feast (Sippapak,
Krasue Valentine, 2006)
Vampirologists are familiar with the myth of Lilith, the archetypical female demon and the
mother of vampires. Summerian records describe her as a “winged spirit who preyed on
pregnant women and infants” (Gaines, 2017, para. 1), and Talmudic references portray her
as “a succubus, a demon in female form who had sex with men while the men were sleeping”
(para. 12). Lilith has been described as an evil spirit that causes illness and death (para. 16),
but while she devours children she is also famous for her uncanny reproductive powers
spawning hundreds of demons each day (only to have most of them killed by angels) (para.
20). Creed reads the female vampire through her connection with menstrual blood,
motherhood and desire, pointing out that she “releases the blood of another woman” (1993,
p. 61), and is capable of giving birth to other vampires through her bite. She also notices that
blood “is the first food of the foetus/vampire” (p. 69) equating pregnancy with a vampiric
experience. In Krasue Valentine, Sao suffers because of her desire. She is portrayed as a
wanton woman engaging in pre-marital sex and an irresponsible mother aborting the baby out
of convenience. By refusing to become a mother when still alive, she inadvertently produces
a ghost offspring that will eventually orchestrate her demise. The decision to kill her unborn
child also turns her into a creature that feeds on children, while her reincarnation as a nurse
brings her into proximity of women in labour. Sao is thus simultaneously a mother, an anti-
mother, and a potential devourer of children. In the final scene of the film we see her trapped
by the ghost of her child with whom she is now reunited. Although the film suggests the aborted
child was a boy, it appears as a girl in a blood-red uniform – a predatory descendant in her
own right.
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Vampire in the city
Steve Pile describes the modern city as vampiric: “living off the dead labour (as Marx might
have it) of its denizens, denizens who are only dimly aware of its vampiric temporalities – even
as they themselves are becoming creatures of the night, in the 24/7 city” (2005, p. 129). Like
the vampire, the city can wait, its “immortal perspective” leading to “a callous indifference to
life” (p. 129) which it consumes for the accumulation of profits. The portrayal of Bangkok in
both films certainly fits this description. In P, glimpses of the city construct Bangkok as an
abject space. Bangkok is introduced as a mess of ugly concrete buildings stripped of paint,
pockmarked with rusty metal crates and air conditioner compressors. The spectral, unfinished
Sathorn Tower looming over the city serves as a bitter reminder of the 1997 financial crisis.
Streets are locked in the never-ending traffic jam and the narrow alleys of the slum are dark,
dangerous, and desperate spaces. Low angle shots make the city look more oppressive,
revealing the layered structure of elevated motorways, concrete columns of unfinished
constructions, and giant aggressive billboards that ask you to buy more. The shimmering
colourful Bangkok is stripped of its dazzle and presented in neutral-tone grey and brown.
Human life is reduced to accidental shots of poor vendors pushing their humble carts through
the streets. Shaky camera movement and fast motion blend images into one consistent blur,
inducing a feeling of dizziness that sends a clear message that Bangkok is overwhelming.
In one of the scenes, Dau-phi pop climbs up the unfinished skyscraper left to rot under the
unrelenting Bangkok sun. She looks at peace surrounded by crumbling concrete slabs with
their steel rods that failed to reinforce them (see Figure 5). This look of serenity is repeated in
the final scene when Dau dances in the bar, linking the two places with death and decay. The
bar has been stylised to look like a mockery of an ancient temple with a stage set for an unholy
ritual. The stage is small and does not offer much space for movement. The dancing girls
writhe around their respective poles without much skill or coordination, like animals standing
tethered at the market. We have no illusion that they are commodities for sale rather than
artists. Dau’s room is practically bare and its bathroom is an image of squalor – an open
invitation to spirits that live on filth. So are the hotel rooms used for sex with the clients,
reduced to bed only, often stained with blood and other bodily fluids.
Figure 5. Dau-phi pop meditating among the urban ruins (Spurrier, P, 2005)
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Although Krasue Valentine features significantly less shots of the city, the few images it leaves
us with are equally unflattering. The hospital – once clearly a beautiful building – is now a heap
of rotting wood and rusty corrugated iron. Its dumpsters overflow with waste. Surrounded by
the skyscrapers of the modern city, the hospital looks like a festering wound that begs to be
cauterised (see Figure 6). The house where Sao sleeps belongs in a gothic novel, not only
haunted but looking like a ghost itself. Bangkok’s love affair with the new has no respect for
the old; the new owner quickly dismisses the building as too damaged to be saved. The
hospital will most likely be razed to the ground to make room for a shopping mall or a
condominium, the most coveted properties in the vampiric city – but the makeover will not
liberate it from its ghosts.
The vampiric city feeds off its inhabitants. This is perhaps most visible in these films through
the portrayal of the characters that traditionally head Thai socio-cultural hierarchies. Alongside
Buddhist monks, the male shaman, mo phi, personifies male patriarchal order. He wields
power over spirits and controls them through exorcism rites. The shaman in P, however, is a
shadow of himself, his supernatural power weakened by drink and poverty, the corruptive
effects of living in the city. In Krasue Valentine, (spiritual) authority is represented by two
policemen whose uniforms are adorned with magical formulas. Their first confrontation with
phi krasue unmasks them as cowardly incompetent fools who run for their lives in fear. The
vampire, writes Creed, “is monstrous – and also attractive – precisely because she does
threaten to undermine the formal and highly symbolic relations of men and women essential
to the continuation of patriarchal society” (1993, p. 61). Just like the two creatures that roam
its streets at night, the vampiric Bangkok in the two films seems to be female and share in
their abjection.
Figure 6. The hospital stands in contrast with the city (Sippapak, Krasue Valentine, 2006)
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Ignoring local beliefs that deny them capacity for change, phi pop and phi krasue seem ready
to move to the city, particularly a city like Bangkok, with its lack of urban planning and chaotic
infrastructure providing an overabundance of liminal spaces they can inhabit. A slum dwelling,
or sex bar, are defined by their temporality, always on the threshold of closure, their existence
tolerated but not legal. A derelict property on prime value land is always on the verge of
disappearing, snapped up by developers. These liminal spaces highlight Bangkok’s
deficiencies – overcrowding, congestion, economic inequality, pollution, corruption, poverty,
sexual exploitation of the vulnerable – and expose the predatory nature of the city that thrives
on blood and money, and offers sex and death in return. Although there is still much to be
done, Bangkok has already shown its capacity to act as gender equaliser, with many women
who have migrated to the city having begun to exercise more control over their lives. Seizing
an opportunity to gain financial independence, city women stand a better chance to resist the
patriarchal order. While the most obvious path to improving female agency and inspiring social
change in the aggressively materialistic city seems to be the accumulation of capital and the
power that goes with it, the promise of prosperity has also tipped the balance towards
alternative forms of spiritualism – from the appearance of popular religious sects to a
resurgence of urban animism, where the role of women is more prominent. But the labyrinthine
structure of the city provides safe space not only for human women; interestingly, urban horror
stories insist that almost all the ghosts and monsters inhabiting the city are female.
The two creatures discussed in this paper, phi pop and phi krasue have long been recognised
as specifically Thai incarnations of the monstrous feminine. The urban versions of these
monsters featured in P and Krasue Valentine differ significantly from their rural ancestors. Phi
pop is quick to learn that its voracious appetite is well suited to the dynamics of consumer
capitalism, and the liminal spaces inhabited by sex workers can afford it much desired
invisibility. Phi krasue, on the other hand, blends in with ghosts, which are seen as more
appropriate figures of fear to haunt the city. The representation of these two creatures in the
movies discussed also differs from their earlier cinematic portrayals as they acquire more
vampiric features borrowed from foreign horror films. In their new forms, the creatures grow
prominent fangs and are frequently shown with blood on their faces, even though blood
drinking has traditionally never been their primary method of feeding. They are also
significantly more sexualised beings than those known from local folklore. While films such as
P and Krasue Valentine, which repatriate animistic spirits/monsters to the city, are extremely
rare in contemporary Thai horror, it is worth noticing that the depictions of ghosts in the urban
setting share this vampiric dimension – as spirits become more corporeal and more
bloodthirsty, ghost stories give way to body horror. Thai horror films have always been
constructed around local figures of fear representing a massive collection of creatures known
collectively as phi, whose fluid identities encompass those of nature spirits, ghosts, demons,
gods, and monsters. But the ongoing urbanization of the country and the dizzying speed with
which Bangkok has transformed itself into a cutthroat neoliberal metropolis continues to bring
these creatures closer to vampires.
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