More often than not, ghost stories work best when digested in a single-sitting short format, rather than stretched to either a full-length feature. Think Edgar Allen Poe, think The Twilight Zone and, more recently think of the Three movies that have presented spooky collaborations from some of Asia's best filmmakers (Park Chan Wook, Peter Chan, Miike Takeshi, etc.) to largely winning effect. 4BIA (‘Phobia’…get it?) is the latest to attempt the short format, presenting four tales of ghostly goings-on and paranormal peril.
Happiness is the story of a young woman, confined to her dilapidated high-rise apartment with a broken leg. She spends her time surfing the Internet and gazing out at the city from her balcony until she receives an SMS from a stranger. He seems friendly enough, and they flirt. But after he admits that he is "lying down all alone" somewhere "cramped" we begin to sense that something is amiss. After she sends him her photo, things start to get creepy for the poor girl. It is a solid enough opening chapter, and daringly forgoes any use of dialogue in favour of text messages to drive the narrative. The results are a little predictable, but creepy enough.
Tit for Tat tells of some pothead high-schoolers whose bullying ends in the accidental death of a classmate, whose spirit returns for vengeance. The standard revenge story is shown through some frenetic shaky cam and furious editing that would even nauseate fans of The Bourne Ultimatum. There are imaginative death sequences (a great perk of teen slashers) and impressive CGI, as well as an ending that is grotesque and hilarious in equal measure. The characters are too irritating to invoke any sympathy from the audience, and the narrative can at times be confusing, but the gleeful bloodlust and destruction make it an enjoyable vignette.
Easily the strongest of the four stories is In The Middle, which follows four young lads on a camping/rafting trip through the jungle. One of the boys, Aey, gets scared during a nightly ghost story session and asks to swap places in the tent so he is not by the entrance. When he is playfully teased, he swears that if he ever became a ghost, he would return and haunt whoever was sleeping in the middle. And wouldn't you know it, the next morning, their raft overturns, and Aey disappears under the surface…until later. The four young actors do a great job see-sawing between goofing around and scaring the crap out of each other. As with all good horror, it is funny right until the moment you leap out of your seat.
The final segment, The Last Fright, is also the weakest. Flight attendant Pim is having a secret affair that even her best friends don't know about. She is called in for a special charter flight, as sole cabin crew for the Princess of Khurkistan. It quickly becomes apparent that the Princess has a beef with Pim, deliberately spilling scalding coffee on her, rejecting her food and ultimately revealing that her husband is Pim's secret lover. In an attempt to placate the Princess, Pim accidentally serves up a dish she is allergic to. When the Princess dies the next day, Pim is left to baby-sit the body alone. The premise is fine, but implausible contrivances along the way – transporting the body in the main cabin, a totally unreasonable pilot – infuriate the audience without arousing sympathy. There are a couple of decent scares, but after what has come before, the audience is more likely to leave the cinema chuckling than shivering with fear.

James Marsh