Diagonaldi Very well executed

Tayyab Torres Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

Ezmae Chang This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Stephanie There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

Michael Ledo This is a Thai film. Like a Bollywood production, Thai believes 2 hours is the proper length for a film, not 90 minutes. The characters are built and rather slowly. Thai films also like bright colors, this one goes a little easy.Mr. T is our main character. He is carefully preparing a house in an upscale community for his family to move into. He works for Empire Supplements, a multilevel marketing company. He has had a few good months and believes his boss when he tells him about the company's bright future. He has a supporting wife, a 14 year old daughter who hated leaving Bangkok, and a younger son.The story is not about the ghost, but about this particular family and how the ghost effects their life. The events are triggered when a young Burmese maid is found locked in a refrigerator with her face cut in half. We really know nothing about the ghost(s), their motive, why they are there, or how close is the nearest Indian burial. It is about the disruptive nature of the ghost on the family.The special effects are light and consists of shadows, rapidly moving figures, and now you see it, now you don't type of stuff. It appears the women gossip as much in the Buddhist temple as American women do in church. They don't hire Mexican help, but Burmese.The ending of the film, which was one I didn't see coming, doesn't give you any closure about the ghosts.PARENTAL GUIDE: No F-bombs, sex, or nudity. The "S" word was used.

lojitsu A-Z Horror Movie of the Day..."Ladda Land" (NR - 2011 - Thai)Genre: Paranormal/PsychoMy Score: 6.9Cast=4 Acting=8 Plot=7 Ending=8 Story=8 Scare=4 Jump=5 F/X=7 Creep=9 Psycho=9When a family moves an upscale housing development with beautiful homes, they discover life in their new neighborhood isn't so perfect when they encounter a series of terrifying, paranormal events that drives the family to the edge of insanity.This movie is so deep that you might not get it the first time around. It plays like a regular ghost story, but there is a whole other aspect that really made it interesting. It's a bit of a slow burn...more dramatic than terrifying. But this Thai film is not one to pass up if you like any type of Asian horror. It's a decent to madness that I was happy to watch!!

poe426 LADDALAND is yet another example of why Asian fright films are so vastly superior to American "horror movies." In this one, things seen and unseen, as well as things heard and unheard, combine to create the kind of all-important mood that is most often missing from U.$. movies. Here, we have a heavy-handed head of household whose dysfunctional family lives in one of those gated communities where it's easy to become "walled-in." There's a cat-cam and the wandering ghost of a murdered maid and a chilling game of hide-and-seek with a kid who turns out to be dead. As mentioned, the mood is sustained throughout (this is one of the most riveting movies I've seen in a while) and the ending is at once poignant and shocking. If you're looking for a solid fright film that delivers on all levels, look no further.

badidosh Know what's scarier than figures lurking in the corner? The fact that your efforts to bring your family together become the very reasons they are slowly turning against you. While Sophon Sakdapisit doesn't do much to bring anything original to the haunted house yarn Ladda Land, he effectively ventures into each of his characters' psyche, turns them into real people with real concerns, and successfully fleshes out their fears — whether of this world or those of beyond.The title refers to a middle class subdivision in Chiang Mai, where a well-meaning man played by Saharat Sangkapreecha moves with his family to work for a drug supplement company. He has another reason for wanting to stay there — his mother-in-law hasn't forgiven him for marrying her daughter (Piyathida Woramusik) and makes his life miserable by rubbing in his faults and failures as a father to his two children. He's especially estranged to his 14-year-old daughter (Apinya Sakuljaroensuk), who grew up spoiled by her grandma. But aside from that, everything's going well with the household — that is until a brutal murder occurs at a nearby house and scary things start happening.It sounds standard but the narrative's arc from the near-perfect happiness of its characters and the world they inhabit to their slow and painful descent to paranoia and madness is near-perfectly smooth. Sakdapisit's skill in creating such trajectory is evident in how he begins the movie, with Sangkapreecha unpacking things and meticulously decorating the house, signifying his desire to start a new life for his family. It's a stark contrast to how it all ends, with bare and empty rooms except for a few objects thrown around, underpinning the tragic outcome despite the best intentions. There's convincing performances from everyone involved, too. Sangkapricha plays it with such subtlety that even when his character acts like an idiot as required of horror films (Why not call the police first instead of venturing into a murder site alone?), he never comes off as annoying. Woramusik and Sakuljaroensuk's characters are also defined more than other horror movies care to carve out secondary roles.As a horror film, Ladda Land teeters midway between the best to reach these shores and the worst of them. What's certain is that it works better when it focuses on the family rather than on the spooky things that go bump in the dark. It's wise enough to invest emotionally and ratchets up the tension so well that it even if it doesn't consistently bring in the scares, there's a constant feeling of anxiety.