The fear of unknown, inexplicable terrors has almost always been rooted in the deep-seated emotional and psychological burdens in the human mind. Irrespective of the medium, nearly every good horror narrative traces the true depths of the ominous supernatural in the dark recesses of the psyche, and Netflix’s recent Thai horror anthology, Terror Tuesday: Extreme, is no exception. An adaptation of the Thai radio horror story series Angkhan Khlumpong, which chronicled the seemingly real-life experiences of people, the anthology series presents eight stories that combine the country’s cultural-religious iconography with subliminal dread in perfect unison. With brilliant practical effects, evocative set design, strong performances, and a moody tone that pervades all the stories, Terror Tuesday: Extreme proves to be another decent addition to the Thai horror directory, which genre fans will love to enjoy in the seclusion of a rainy night.
Spoilers Ahead
Episode 1: Our Little Sister
Aye blames herself for the death of her sister, Elle, as she had asked their mother to let her drive in the first place, which eventually resulted in a gruesome accident that claimed Elle’s life. Ever since their father moved out, Aye and Elle had been raised by their loving mother, who shared a strong bond with their late daughter, and now, with her passing, she is being mentally torn apart. Aye, who is undergoing therapy, tries to move past the tragedy and also gets reassurance from her friend, Toom, but there is no one to whom her mother can confide in or share her agony with. To assuage her pain, Aye’s mother seeks counsel from a local priest, who gives her a Kuman Thong doll, a replicant of Elle, whom she can treat like her own daughter. Aye fears for her mother’s mental health as she continues to lose touch with reality in her morbid obsession with the doll, and as Aye decides to interfere, she finds herself haunted by the spirit of her dead sister. Their mother finally snaps and starts attacking Aye with murderous intent as she seeks to reunite her family on the other side.
It is not until Aye throws the doll outside the premises of their household that she finally faces the truth. It was Aye who couldn’t cope with the loss of her mother and sister during the accident; she spiraled down the slippery slope of her mental health as she refused medication, and bringing home the dolls of her mother and sister was the only way Aye could pretend everything was perfect. In fact, Toom was just an imaginary friend Aye had conjured up to relieve herself of the guilt, and as she remembers one of her therapy sessions, the concocted reality gets torn down in an instant. As Aye breaks down with the dolls lying beside her, a heavy downpour cools her deranged, afflicted mind.
Episode 2: Wedding Dress
Expert designer/tailor Milk is recruited by Nutch, the owner of a wedding dress shop, and Milk has to tend to the shop in her absence. Milk gets her first customer pretty soon, but faces trouble when she is faced with a short deadline to refit a particular wedding dress according to her customer’s liking. Milk is already troubled by concerns about the future prospect of marriage with her commitment-phobic boyfriend, Bank, who barely earns enough for himself let alone being able to pay for the marriage dowry—and with the pressure of the deadline mounting up, she almost starts losing her mind, spending her days alone in the shop. On one occasion, Bank visits Milk, and getting confronted about his escapist tendencies, he decides to leave her. Milk’s misery continues as she finds herself haunted by the vengeful spirit of the previous designer/tailor of the shop, Peet, and ends up losing her customer, who calls out the shop on social media for misconduct. An infuriated Nuch calls Milk and learns about the terrible reckoning of Peet, and Milk discovers that she killed Bank after being possessed by the vengeful spirit.
A talented designer, Peet used to create beautiful wedding dresses for Nuch’s customers but was too insecure about her obese physique to try one for herself. To make herself conventionally beautiful, Peet sought help from Nuch to perform surgeries on herself, and her obsession with physical beauty pushed her to a manic state, which resulted in her becoming an anorexic, deranged individual. After a heated argument with Nuch about a wedding dress she made, Peet almost ended up killing her, prompting Nuch to stab her to death in self-defense and hide the fact from the authorities as she hid Peet’s remains inside a tank on the roof of the shop. Nuch finally gets her comeuppance as Peet’s spirit, now clad in her favorite wedding dress, kills her and organizes a wedding of the dead between Milk and her deceased boyfriend.
Episode 3: Ode To My Family
The third episode of Terror Tuesday: Extreme anthology series once again puts a psychological spin on a tale of haunting, as the story follows the experiences of a troubled teenager, Win, who has moved to an isolated villa with his sister and parents. The reason for their relocation is problematic as Win’s father, a former hotshot officer, has been exposed for bureaucratic corruption—thanks to Win willingly drawing the attention of the authorities to their house—and the family has to lay low for a few days until the situation gets better. It should be mentioned that Win’s father is not his biological parent, which often prompts Win to feel left out in his own family. Win’s sister, Linda, initially seems to despise him for robbing them of the lifestyle she was used to before she had a chance to move abroad, but eventually, she comes around after realizing that Win doesn’t want to be left alone. Both their parents are having affairs, and overall the family dynamics are dysfunctional, to say the least.
Trouble arises when Win notices a particular room in the villa being locked up and attached with a religious seal, and he fears for the worst when the seal appears to be torn. Win scours the net to learn the history behind the villa, where a family had seemingly died from being poisoned through their food—and his fears start manifesting when his mother starts acting increasingly erratic all of a sudden. All hell breaks loose when during a family dinner, every member of his family, except for Win, attacks each other, dies and gets possessed—prompting him to hide inside the seemingly haunted room. Finally, it is revealed that it was Win himself who poisoned his entire family, hid their bodies inside the room, and shot himself to death—just so he doesn’t have to lose anyone. The troubling relationship he shared with each of the members of his family resulted in a fear of abandonment, which pushed him over the edge to ultimately commit the gruesome act.
Episode 4: The Vow
Nat, an aspiring architect working in a resort owned by his girlfriend, Dao’s father, has opted for a promising job in Sweden, and despite his wish to pursue his passion, he finds himself unable to share the truth with Dao, who dreams of spending their life together. As the duo visits the shrine of the Black Hill goddess, they learn about the true origin of the legend, which acts as a cautionary tale about mistrust and deceit in a relationship. Later that night, both Nat and Dao are haunted by the fierce Black Hill goddess, and the only way to save themselves is to confess their secrets to each other.
Nat comes clean about his willingness to follow his passion, and Dao reveals that she had arranged for his present job by recommending Nat to her father. She also reveals that despite her claims about staying together, she fears about the future, as she is unsure whether the bond between them, which is already waning, will continue to exist even after their marriage. The arrival of transparency in their relationship eventually results in the tumultuous night coming to an end, as the appearance of the goddess was nothing more than a figment of their mutual mental projection of their burdened psyche. Reconciling with each other, Nat and Dao take a lesson from their sordid experience at the end.
Episode 5: Spectral Class
A newly appointed government school teacher, Oil, gets posted in a rural area and goes to visit one of her students, Nik, after finding him to be absent from school for a prolonged period. However, his eccentric, creepy family, which includes Nik’s father and grandma, tries to convince Oil that Nik has run away with his druggie friends after assaulting his grandma. While spending the night at the school as per regulations, Oil comes across a frightened Nik, who reveals the truth about the situation. Nik shares that his family has been conned by a local shaman into trafficking hallucinogenic drugs and, under his influence, has kept him captive in his home, torturing him all the while—until he finally manages to escape after seeing an opening. Nik’s broken resolve got some much-needed strength after seeing his teacher come to his rescue, which is why he sought her help to save his life.
However, as Oil tries to seek help from the authorities, she is met with utter negligence, which prompts her to fight tooth and nail when Nik’s deranged father and grandma arrive at the school to take him away. Oil cannot put up much of a resistance as she is forcefully drugged, which prompts her to experience weird hallucinations, and in the end, she is unable to help the poor boy, who is sacrificed in front of the school’s religious shrine by his family. A psyched-up Oil finally snaps at her helplessness as she butchers Nik’s father and grandma in a fit of manic rage, unleashing a bloodbath—the remnants of which are witnessed by the teachers and students the next day. More than the psychedelic drugs forced into her body, it was Oil’s inability to save the kid that set off her on an unhinged killing spree.
Episode 6: Girl Next Door
This one is pretty straightforward haunting, although there are elements of psychological troubles sprinkled through the story as well. While moving into a new apartment, Bird sees a terrifying vision of the corpse of a girl right under the building, which momentarily rattles his senses. Bird catches a glimpse of a girl living next door and starts receiving strange mandates and warnings about staying in his apartment. It should be mentioned that Bird is a drug addict who lost his last job due to his self-destructive habits and avoids a conversation in that regard by refusing to accept his mother’s calls. His friend, Kie, whose financial help has allowed Bird to stay afloat, is oblivious to the truth that Bird has wasted his money chasing his addiction.
Bird finds himself being tormented inside his apartment after ignoring the warnings sent to him and finds no one to turn to help as he has a heated spat with Kie, who has learned about his deceit. Eventually, Bird gets trapped inside his room as it becomes increasingly confusing whether the supernatural elements or his own dwindling mental state are responsible for his mental state. Kie learns from the previous resident of the neighboring apartment that the previous resident of Bird’s apartment—a girl—had taken her own life following the backlash of an affair. Ultimately, it is revealed that Bird had followed the same pattern as well, as he is revealed to have taken his own life in the present, and it was the perspective of his trapped spirit that was shown as his torment all along.
Episode 7: Dear Granny
Nulek despises her workaholic mother, Montha, for abandoning her at a young age, and blames her for her father’s absence from their lives as well. Nulek was raised in the loving care of her grandmother, and it is understandable why she lashes out at Montha for losing sight of her own mother on one occasion, which results in her disappearance. Growing up, Nulek had no one to connect with except for her grandma, and her hate for Montha only increases after her grandmother’s absence starts taking a toll on her mental condition. Desperate for a solution, Montha uses her mother’s shoes in a binding ritual, which will allegedly bring her back in due time.
Nulek, who is getting frustrated by the occasional snooping of a Peeping Tom of a neighbor, finds Montha’s desperate attempt to cope with her reality to be disgusting—but gets surprised when, three days later, her grandmother indeed returns to the home. However, in Montha’s absence, Nulek finds herself getting hunted by the vengeful spirit of her grandmother, while Montha discovers that her mother had passed away after drowning. Nulek meets a fatal accident while frantically escaping from her house, and it is revealed that Montha lives alone after the deaths of her mother and daughter, desperate to bring them back with the binding ritual. In all probability, Nulek was tormented by her loneliness after her grandma’s passing, and her fears were compounded due to the activities of the neighboring Peeping Tom, who is revealed to be a streamer. In the end, her fears resulted in her death, as she was fleeing from something that didn’t even exist in the first place. Montha’s predicament is even more tragic, as she is still desperately clinging to the possibility of their return even till the very end.
Episode 8: Viral Curse
As a foreigner living as a single mother, Ple is having a tough time running her laundry, but she is trying to manage somehow, to make ends meet. Despite having a scholar degree and the chance to make it big like her friends by venturing abroad, Ple remains tied up in her life to fulfill her responsibilities to her daughter. Ple’s daughter, Kaew, is about to begin her schooling soon, and the hefty fees for her admission, added to the laundry store owner’s nagging for rent, have placed Ple under an economic burden. With financial pressures, loneliness, and concerns for Kaew’s well-being putting her mental resolve to the test, Ple senses her reality getting a bit shakier than usual after listening to an audio horror story from the channel “Tuesday Terrors” as her own life starts resembling the afflictions of the single mother and her child from the story.
Ple attends a reunion with her friends and leaves Kaew alone for the time being, and after sensing trouble on her way back, frantically returns to her home to hallucinate a ghostly presence in their room. Ple had found a piece of jewelry from one of her customers’ garments, and without thinking of consequences, she had sold it in desperation to provide for Kaew’s admission fees and store rent. As a result, the owner of the jewelry created a ruckus, threatening to bring the authorities if Ple failed to compensate for the loss. Grasping at the last straws of her sanity, Ple decides to flee with her daughter, and as she packs up, she keeps Kaew locked inside the bathroom. Ple starts seeing the same ghostly apparition taking Kaew away from her without realizing the truth that, in her troubled state of mind, she herself has caused her beloved daughter’s death by drowning. As the episode ends, Ple is revealed to have been evicted, and her afflictions haven’t ended yet as she reaches out to a “Tuesday Terrors” broadcast to blame them for her present condition.
