What a view | Thai ghost story gets HBO treatment in ‘Pob’, a gruesome tale of an entrails-eating spirit

It’s fright night on HBO Go, where early Halloween terrors take the spectral form of a “phi pob”, a murderous Thai ghost with an appetite for still-warm human entrails.

“Pob” (October 28 at 10pm; showing simultaneously on Now TV channel 115) is episode four of HBO Asia’s flesh-prickling Folklore series of six short horror films from across the continent, each rooted in a nation’s occult myths.

Myths? Consider while viewing that last year the Thai constabulary’s very own ghostbusters were deployed in an eastern province to confront a malevolent female phi pob that villagers blamed for four dead cows and several sick police officers.

HBO Go’s demon, meanwhile, is brought (back?) to life in black and white by renowned Thai filmmaker Pen-ek Ratanaruang, who showed “Pob” to no little acclaim at last month’s Toronto International Film Festival, its Primetime category featuring big-screen-capable programmes made with what the festival calls a “cinematic” quality.

Perhaps here they had in mind the B-movie special effects of the 1950s, which are recalled by certain scenes in which the phi pob, who calls himself a “ravenous ghost” (forget merely “hungry”), gorges on a victim’s bloody insides. Quite why a spectre should need sustenance at all we’ll let pass for now.

This particular phi pob has gone looking for fresh meat in the house of an American man, and with no common language between them, the kindly farang believes the ghost to be a beggar and offers him a sandwich. Similarly unable to communicate, the spirit, who in life had been a meek taxi driver robbed and gunned down by a passenger, becomes so frustrated that he kills the farang so as to feast. But don’t worry, the story isn’t without comedy: the ghost walks into a door, not through it, and, with the aid of a dictionary, calls himself a goat.