Afterward, the male protagonist sat inside the screening room, waiting. His friend came over and handed him a wristwatch, the very same watch the protagonist had pawned earlier.
The moment the protagonist accepted it, he suddenly realized that the person sitting beside him had turned into Chaba.
Terrified, he fell backward onto the floor and scrambled away in panic, ultimately fleeing the screening room in a disheveled state.
But even as he pushed through the crowd of moviegoers, he saw Chaba once again. She looked right at him and tore open her mouth, splitting it into a grotesque, gaping wound. Horrified, the protagonist screamed and darted into the elevator to hide.
The elevator abruptly stopped operating. The protagonist sensed an ominous presence behind him. Terrified, he slowly turned around—only to see Chaba hanging behind him, her body swaying back and forth.
Petrified, he forced open the elevator doors and tried to escape, but the moment he pried it open, Chaba lunged at him, grabbed him by the throat, and dragged him back inside. His screams echoed through the elevator shaft.
Later, when the maintenance workers finally opened the elevator, the protagonist was already lying inside, his entire body twitching uncontrollably. He was promptly brought home. His ex-girlfriend assumed he must have taken drugs again and hallucinated, but she still visited him to check on his condition.
Unexpectedly, she learned from his coworkers that he had not touched any drugs since the incident. Her surprise grew, and for the first time in a long while, she began to believe him.
She then decided to investigate the things he had described and found out that Chaba was a real person—and that according to rumors, her corpse had never been found. This left the ex-girlfriend speechless. She merely recorded all the information, unsure how to respond.
Meanwhile, the protagonist woke from a nightmare, saw his ex-girlfriend by his side, and told her everything again.
The ex-girlfriend admitted she didn't know whether she should believe him. After all, what he said was unbelievably absurd.
But after analyzing everything carefully, she decided to go with him to investigate Chaba's home. According to the legends, Chaba's corpse should still be inside; if they could find it and burn the remains, perhaps the curse would end. The protagonist agreed that it was worth trying.
The next day, after repeatedly asking around, the two finally found Chaba's village. They noticed that many villagers were missing their eyes. This strengthened the protagonist's conviction: this place was definitely the source of the curse, and everything that happened to Chaba must have happened here.
The protagonist and his ex-girlfriend entered the house where Chaba once lived, hoping to find clues. But at that moment, the ceiling fan suddenly fell. The protagonist leapt forward to shield her and was injured instead. He fell through a collapsing area into a hidden basement chamber. Before losing consciousness, he vaguely saw his ex-girlfriend rushing off to find help.
When he finally woke up, he looked around, but the room was pitch-black. He could hardly see anything. Using the small shaft of light from above, he noticed a rope hanging down, covered in old cobwebs—its end frayed, snapped apart. He wondered if this was where Chaba had once been hung.
Just as he was about to call out, he heard frantic banging at the door. He stared in fear as the door was forced open and a woman rushed in—it was his ex-girlfriend, worried sick about his injuries.
Feeling relieved, he let her help him up, and she urged him to leave immediately so they could go to the hospital. But just as he prepared to leave, a rope suddenly dropped down behind him. When he looked up, he saw his ex-girlfriend peering from above, urging him to climb up.
And then the question hit him—if his ex-girlfriend was above, then who was the one pulling him forward into the darkness?
The "person" pulling him refused to let go, tugging harder and harder. The protagonist resisted with all his strength. Moments later, someone rushed out from the darkness—it was his ex-girlfriend, but her appearance had twisted into something resembling Chaba's ghostly image. Horrified, the protagonist screamed.
He then woke up violently. His ex-girlfriend was there, and two other people stood at the doorway. He was immediately sent to the hospital. After examining him, the doctors concluded that he only had some pulled muscles and minor fractures. But they were baffled as to why he had gone to such a dangerous abandoned house. The protagonist eventually confessed that he had been searching for information about Chaba's death.
To his shock, the doctor told them that Chaba had never died. Both he and his ex-girlfriend were stunned. A staff member later guided them to the psychiatric hospital, where they met the now-elderly Chaba. Although mentally unstable, she was very much alive. The protagonist was left completely bewildered—if Chaba was still alive, then what kind of ghost had he encountered?
Soon after, the cursed horror movie was scheduled for public release, and promotional posters were everywhere. Seeing the posters, the protagonist remembered something—Chaba had a very distinct scar on her face, but the ghost he had encountered had none. In that instant, he understood: the ghost he saw wasn't Chaba at all—it was the spirit of the actress who had portrayed Chaba in the film.
Determined, he took his ex-girlfriend to the film studio to look for answers, but the entrance gate was locked. A passerby told them that the film company hadn't opened for over ten days, and the mailbox at the front was overflowing.
Still, wanting the truth, the protagonist broke the window late at night and sneaked inside with his ex-girlfriend.
After searching the building, he found backstage footage from the film's production. Upon playing it, he finally learned what truly happened.
During the scene where the actress playing Chaba was supposed to be hung, the director was dissatisfied and ordered repeated retakes. The whole film crew grew increasingly frustrated. After the actress begged for one more take, they tried again. This time, her acting was incredible, and the director was thrilled. But then someone noticed the safety rope had snapped. The actress had actually hung for real. They quickly lowered her—
—but it was too late. Blood filled her eyes; she had died from the hanging.
That was the moment the protagonist finally understood where the curse originated. Leaving the studio, he told his ex-girlfriend never to watch the movie. He returned the redeemed wristwatch to her, apologized, then rode off on his motorcycle. He intended to go to the theater and burn the cursed videotape to end everything.
"Hey, Shane! Long time no see. Not bad at hiding, huh?"
The moment he arrived at the cinema, he ran straight into the gang that made pirated cam-recorded movies. They blocked him from both front and back. He had no idea how to escape. Suddenly, the nearby screening room opened, people poured out, some talking on their phones, others spilling popcorn everywhere. Taking advantage of the chaos, the protagonist slipped into the crowd and made his way into the projection room, where he burned the cursed tape.
But when he stepped back outside—
"Hey, Shane! Long time no see. Not bad at hiding, huh?"
The same gang blocked him again. Confused, he watched as the nearby screening room opened once more, the same crowd walking out, the same popcorn spilling. Without thinking, he darted among them again and burned the cursed tape a second time.
This time, he made sure no one was outside before stepping through the door—
Only for the exact same scene to repeat.
"Hey, Shane! Long time no see. Not bad at hiding, huh?"
The exact same gang. The exact same scene. The same door opening. The same people. The same popcorn.
Only then did he realize—
He had fallen under the curse of the actress's ghost.
Furious, he attacked the gang members and rushed to burn the film reels again, but every time he stepped outside, the loop repeated endlessly. Driven increasingly insane, his blows grew more violent. When he was seconds away from beating a gang member to death—he suddenly realized he was punching nothing but a poster of Chaba.
Confused, he looked around—
And the next instant, the poster twisted into Chaba herself.
He collapsed in terror and fled, stumbling into a room filled wall-to-wall with televisions.
Every TV flickered on, displaying the scene of Chaba's hanging over and over again.
The protagonist ran in desperation until he reached the main hall, where he saw his ex-girlfriend entering another screening room. Without thinking, he rushed inside—but the real ex-girlfriend only reached the hallway moments later and saw him disappear into the screening room.
Inside, the protagonist could not find her. The screen played the hanging scene yet again, but in the blink of an eye, Chaba vanished from the image. Feeling something terribly wrong, he turned around—
—and Chaba jumped directly at his face, grabbed his throat, screaming,
"You want to see me die, don't you?"
"Then I'll let you watch!"
Terrified, he fled yet again. Chaba chased him relentlessly. With nowhere else to go, he pushed open a random door—
—and found himself inside Chaba's home.
The surroundings shifted into that yellow-tinted visual style used in the movie. Sensing imminent danger, he tried to escape, but the door behind him opened only into a solid wall. He was trapped.
Meanwhile, his ex-girlfriend entered the screening room but didn't see him. Instead, she saw the screen showing the protagonist walking through a door into the film itself—surrounded by eyeless corpses. Among them she recognized Brother Yuan, and the other bodies belonged to the crew who filmed the movie. Only then did she fully believe the protagonist.
Inside the film world, the protagonist curled into a corner—
and Chaba gouged out his eyes with her bare hands, killing him in agony.
Sadly, his ex-girlfriend did not remember the warning he had given her.
A few days later, in a packed movie theater, the audience watched the film. On screen, behind the eyeless children, they could see countless corpses—among them the protagonist's ex-girlfriend, her eyes gouged out as well. She, too, had fallen victim to the ghost.
And at the very end, the actress, now a vengeful spirit, appeared, hanging once again, glaring with hatred at the audience who did not save her. Chaba lowered her head, then suddenly snapped it up, shouting:
"You want to see me die, don't you?!"
The film ended there.
Edward felt that this movie was cursed mainly because its central theme was:
Anyone who watches the movie gets cursed.
And the source of the curse was the actress's dying gaze. Anyone who saw that moment would be marked.
In Edward's opinion, the movie was somewhat clichéd. Most of the scare scenes relied on sudden "jump-scares"—effectively shocking people, but eventually becoming predictable and even boring. Still, the film broke away from many typical Thai horror tropes.
Thai horror normally features a twist ending built around karmic retribution—like Shutter, where the male lead is haunted due to his cowardice and cruelty. Most Thai horror follows similar logic.
But this film leaned into Grudge-style irrationality:
If you watch it, you die. No reason needed.
Just this simple rule alone subverted the Thai horror formula. Combined with the idea of a cursed film that drags viewers into itself to kill them, sealing their bodies inside the movie, the concept was extremely fresh at the time it was first made.
However, the ghost's actual abilities were rather limited. Most of its power came from illusions. Killing someone required mentally breaking them first, then forcing them into its own realm—the "movie world"—before it could inflict real physical harm.
All of the protagonist's encounters were mostly illusion-based scares, with almost no real physical damage until he entered the film itself. Compared to stronger horror ghost like Kayako, this ghost was fairly weak.
After all, illusion-based ghosts exist everywhere in horror fiction. Some can't even possess people. If the protagonist had stayed calm, he could have simply endured the ghost's presence—like in that comedic short where the ghost tries everything to scare the main character, only to grow frustrated because nothing works.
"This kind of story…" Edward coughed lightly. In his previous life, such a plot felt extremely unlucky and foreboding, and it would probably be the same in this world. After all, it basically curses every single viewer.
"But this could be great for harvesting fear points."
Edward thought about it and finally decided to keep this script. If he filmed it someday, he could definitely scare countless people, generating fear points in droves.
(End of Chapter)