Folklore: A Mother’s Love & Pob

Singaporean director Eric Khoo presents the anthology TV series Folklore that gather’s Asia’s best genre directors to make horror tales representative of their culture. In A Mother’s Love, from Indonesian director Joko Anwar (Satan’s Slaves), a woman finds a group of impoverished children in the attic of the house she was cleaning, which attracts a spirit that targets her 7 year old son. In Pob, from Thai director Pen-ek Ratanaruang, a blogger covering a crime scene encounters an elderly ghost, who tells an odd story about the night before.

Folklore is an anthology series produced for HBO Asia that consists of horror stories based around legends and mythologies of Asian cultures. In A Mother’s Love, the focus is a spirit called a Wewe, which kidnaps and devours children. Then there’s the titular spirit in Pob, which is known as a ravenous ghost that devours humans in the night.

In my opinion, A Mother’s Love and Pob are good examples of what Folklore would be like as a series, since they are both very stylistically different. A Mother’s Love is more a typical atmospheric ghost story, while Pob is presented in black and white and has a much more lighthearted and comedic tone, despite also featuring one hell of a jump scare. I have to say that I enjoyed this sampling of Folklore and I hope that the full series becomes available in North America.

Screenings

• Friday, September 14, 9:00 PM – TIFF Bell Lightbox