Thai cinemagoers have a busy week ahead: eight new releases land in cinemas between November 12 and 18, spanning Hollywood action, Chinese awards contenders, homegrown horror and a superhero import.
The headline draw is arguably Ti West's Ebenezer, a ghost story set in Dickensian London with Johnny Depp as a man confronting past, present and future in a bid for redemption. Depp has been leaning into the role off-screen too, appearing at San Diego Comic-Con in full Scrooge costume and make-up to crash a panel and unveil the first trailer. Action fans get The Beast, the fourth team-up between director Renny Harlin and Samuel L. Jackson (after The Long Kiss Goodnight, Deep Blue Sea and Cleaner), in which a US president uncovers his own classified arsenal during a coordinated coup. David Leitch's How To Rob A Bank adds Nicholas Hoult, Christian Slater and Zoë Kravitz to a heist story about robbers who livestream their crimes, complete with a retro 1990s MGM logo nod.
The Chinese entry is the one with real awards heat: Once Upon A Time In The Middle East (Huan Ying Lai Long Can Guan), starring one of China's biggest box-office names, Shen Teng, as a chef who turns a struggling restaurant into a refuge when war engulfs his city. It is China's official submission for Best International Feature at the 99th Academy Awards. On the Japanese front, Kamen Rider Zeztz: Farewell Mission delivers tokusatsu superhero fare, with a bombed police agency, a framed hero and a villain wielding reality-bending "Daydream" powers.
Local productions give the week its Thai flavour. Mahout, directed by Wattanachai Doonlayakowit, follows a foreign businessman who travels to Surin for a family inheritance and, after joining local ceremonies, starts having visions of a past life as a Kuy elephant keeper — a story of family, faith and reincarnation rooted in one of Thailand's most distinctive regions. Womb Of The Dead is darker: a nurse takes a job at the hospital where his sister vanished years earlier and uncovers a black-magic operation harvesting unborn foetuses for occult amulets sold to the wealthy. There is also a documentary, Homeless, following Bangkok-born artist Pairoj "Pok" Pichetmethakul, who spent nearly a decade chasing a gallery career in New York before an event pushed him to work on the streets, using homeless people as his subjects and mentors of a kind.
If you are visiting Bangkok or passing through Thai cities this week, it is an unusually varied slate — and Mahout in particular doubles as a small cinematic preview of Surin province and its Kuy mahout heritage, which might tempt travellers to add the region's elephant country to a Thailand itinerary. Release line-ups and dates can shift by cinema, so check local listings before you go.
