13 Beloved is a deliciously dark slap that teeters back and forth between black comedy and gritty violent suspense. The film’s 25-year-old director handles this dichotomy very adeptly and gives the film a terrific stark, clean look with inventive cinematography, startling imagery and good use of outside locations. In addition to making a satire though, he also has made a statement about the human condition: our greed, our callousness and our susceptibility to ever-increasing violence. This isn’t done in a heavy manner but with a fast-moving tense narrative that is constantly entertaining and surprising.

Phuchit (Krissada ‘Noi’ Sukosol) is a salesman of musical instruments whose life is reaching a critical point – his girlfriend has left him, his sales numbers are way off, his unpaid bills are accumulating, his car has been repossessed, his mother is asking for money and he is out of cigarettes. His boss calls him in one day and gives him his walking papers and Phuchit goes out in the stairwell to have a last dazed smoke – a fly begins to buzz around him. He gets a phone call: “Do you want to win 100 million baht (about $40 million)?” the voice on the other end asks. “All you have to do is accomplish 13 tasks that we ask of you and, upon the completion of each one, we will transfer money into your bank account.” Phuchit responds with suspicion that this must be a joke. “No, it’s a game and we will be watching you. Task No 1 – kill that fly buzzing around your head and you will win 10,000 baht.”

After accomplishing this proverbial (‘he couldn’t kill a fly’) first task, Phuchit warily waits for the next ones – and they don’t seem so bad at first – making three children cry, stealing the coins from a blind beggar” – easy to justify to yourself to win 100 million baht. But the violence, tension and humiliation increase with each task and soon Phuchit, covered in blood, is being sought by the police, his blank-eyed expression saying, “I can do this and everything will turn out all right.” It doesn’t as the bodies pile up leading to a rather preposterous but visceral ending. Along the way Phuchit begins to realize his tasks are all tied to events in his childhood and he is being forced to relive them as if in a perverse version of This is Your Life.

None of this makes a lot of sense as he is manipulated by the all-knowing voice, but the audience is quickly sucked into the mysterious, improbable reality. The film works to a large extent because Phuchit is never made into a monster but is portrayed quite sympathetically, so that you have to ask yourself at what point would you have stopped? It appears the movie was edited down because a few loose ends are left unexplained, but at the same time the director cleverly pulls various disparate aspects and side characters together – such as in the opening scene of a little old lady being helped across the street by a young man. For a long time this doesn’t seem to fit into the rest of the film, but when it finally does it hits you like a flash of light.

Brian Naas