Tomb Watcher

Tomb… It May Concern

Tomb Watcher
Directed by Vathanyu Ingkawiwat
Thailand  2025
Kantana Motion Pictures
Screened at FrightFest Sunday 24th August 2025

Okay, so Tomb Watcher was quite intriguing and a nice opener to my last three movies at this year’s August FrightFest. The producer came on at the start to explain to the audience that, in her country, this was a big soap opera a number of decades ago, which was when her grandmother wrote the story it was based on. She now, just turned 92, gave her granddaughter her blessing to adapt it into a big screen horror movie version… I would suspect giving the supernatural elements more emphasis.

This one is about an artist (Thanavate Siriwattanagul) who lets his very rich, young wife (played by Woranuch BhiromBhakdii) die… pretty much of a broken heart… so that he can continue living with his young mistress (Arachaporn Pokinpakorn) off his dead wife’s fortune. So far so good and this almost sounds like an early Italian giallo in its plot set up.

However, there’s a problem when the wife’s will says he would indeed inherit her fortune… as long as he watches over her in her glass coffined tomb for 100 days in their out of the way dream home in the country. Also, his lover has to stay as well and… when she finally falls in as to what’s really happening and why she’s suddenly been given this dream home, well… it would be true to say she’s not entirely happy.

Especially when the vengeful spirit of the dead wife living with them is constantly doing her harm and slowly driving her mad. Everything mounts to a climax which… I dunno… worked visually, as does the rest of the movie (it looks quite stunning throughout) but which, for me, didn’t quite make sense in its entirety. And, yeah, I know I’m not supposed to be trying to use logic to negotiate the folk horror elements specific to that country here but… let’s just say I was somewhat puzzled by the end sequence, which comes, unexpectedly, after a short screen card credit for the director.

Okay, now I was possibly not in the best frame of mind when I saw this one because I’d been out to an outdoor screening of the 1984 Godzilla movie the night before and not gotten home until just before midnight, with an earlyish start to the next day. So I confess to the fact that certain parts of the film, such as when the lover is trying to escape the property in her big car, left me in a slightly soporific state, to be honest.

That being said, it’s well acted, has a nice use of constantly interjecting flashbacks built into the structure (which I apologise for not always realising until I was halfway through those scenes and which I suspect may well have been executed in a more linear fashion in the original soap opera version of the tale) and has a nice, slow burn atmosphere with occasional jump scare inserts throughout.

All that being said, I think this must be one of the first Thai horror films I’ve seen in a while where nobody’s head jumped off their shoulders and started flying around to chase people. But, hey, I wasn’t necessarily expecting that either so, that's okay.

Ultimately, I hold a lot of affection for Tomb Watcher and I would actually pick up a Blu ray version if… and I would expect it’s a big if… it ever gets any UK distribution in that format. So hopefully, fingers crossed, it will have a UK life after FrightFest and I especially wish this one well.