Da Chuc, Dieu Duc, Duy Anh, horror, Ma Da: The Drowning Spirit, movies, My Duyen, Nguyen Huu Hoang, reviews, Thanh Loc, Trung Dan, Viet Huong, Vietnam
October 8, 2024
by Carla Hay
Directed by Nguyen Huu Hoang
Vietnamese with subtitles
Culture Representation: Taking place in Vietnam, near the Mekong River, the horror film “Ma Da: The Drowning Spirit” features an all-Vietnamese cast of characters representing the working-class and middle-class.
Culture Clash: A vengeful ghost called Ma Da possesses, kidnaps and kills people, and a single mother fights to get her daughter away from this evil spirit.
Culture Audience: “Ma Da: The Drowning Spirit” will appeal mainly to people who don’t mind watching idiotic and boring horror movies.
Hokey, unfocused and very derivative, “Ma Da: The Drowning Spirit” is a limp horror movie that struggles to keep its ideas afloat. This story (about a mother battling a vengeful ghost) has terrible acting, sloppy editing, and tacky visual effects. It’s a complete time waster of a film that has a twist ending that makes this already bad movie even worse.
Directed by Nguyen Huu Hoang, “Ma Da: The Drowning Spirit” does not have a credited screenwriter, which is usually an indication that whoever wrote the movie is too embarrased to be publicly associated with it. “Ma Da: The Drowning Spirit” takes place in an unnamed village near the Mekong River, which is supposed to be haunted by an evil ghost named Ma Da. Children are warned not to go near the river.
The story is that Ma Da (played by Mỹ Duyên) was a teenage girl who committed suicide by jumping into the river and drowning. She re-emerges from the river to target souls whom she thinks are spiritually compatible with hers. Ma Da then possesses the person she targets (the targeted person’s eyes turn black during this possession), she kidnaps them, and usually kills them in the river.
One of the residents of this village is Bâ Lê (played by Việt Hương), who makes a living by fishing for corpses in the river and selling their bodies for organ donations. She should not be surprised that her creepy and disgusting job will attract an evil spirit. But Lê shows throughout this movie that she’s less-than-smart and makes all the predictable nonsensical decisions that people do in horror movies.
Lê is a single mother to a daughter named Bé Nhung (played by Dạ Chúc), who’s about 5 or 6 years old. Lê and Nhung live with Lê’s mother Bâ Vu (played by Diệu Đưc), who is retired. Lê tends to be a high-strung workaholic. Her mother Lâi is much more laid-back and nurturing.
One day, Nhung finds a girl doll that’s about 6 inches tall on the ground of a swampy marsh area. The doll has stringy, long black hair, a watermelon-colored blouse and a white skirt. As soon as Nhung finds and keeps the doll, you know that bad things are going to happen. A flashback show that Ma Da was holding the doll when she committed suicide by drowning.
Nhung starts having nightmares. She also has visions of a shadowy female ghost figure who keeps following her when she’s awake. (We all know who this ghost is.) Lê has a hard time believing Nhung because every time Nhung cries and says she’s seen the ghost, Lê doesn’t see anything.
Other villagers who end up getting involved are a shaman/medical examiner named Ông Dân (played by Trung Dân) and Lê’s confidant Ông Lương (played by Thành Lộc), who works with his father in the village’s medical examiner place. A friend of Lhung’s is a boy named Hiếu (played by Duy Anh), who’s about 8 or 9 years old and who acts like he’s her bratty older brother. He likes to tease Lhung a lot with mild pranks.
Hiếu disappears one night. The word quickly spreads in the village that Ma Da must’ve taken Hiếu. “Ma Da: The Drowning Spirit” is so poorly written, Hiếu and his disappearance are not mentioned again for a very long stretch of the movie, which has a flashback scene at the end to finally show what happened to him.
Before the movie gets to its atrocious ending, there are many cliché-ridden jump scares that are not terrifying at all. Nhung disappears and reappears with no explanation. And there are several muddled action scenes of Lê in the water. Ma Da is barely seen in this mostly darkly lit movie. (Ma Da is supposed to look like a drenched teenage girl in a red dress.)
A movie about an evil spirit that haunts a community should at least tell more about the origins of this evil spirit. But “Ma Da: The Drowning Spirit” doesn’t even bother to make that effort. All that’s left is a movie that throws together a lot of dull, predictable elements seen in other horror films, but without making them part of a cohesive story—just like puzzle pieces that do not fit. Viewers of “Ma Da: The Drowning Spirit” should not expect a coherent story or a reason to care after the film’s awful ending is revealed.
Lotte Entertainment released “Ma Da: The Drowning Spirit” in select U.S. cinemas on September 27, 2024. The movie was released in Vietnam on August 16, 2024.