This not to say that the film is preachy. While it does have a message, "13 Beloved" is the most intelligently entertaining film to be produced by the Thai film industry in a long while.

Krisada portrays Chit, sacked from his job selling musical instruments on the same day that his car is repossessed. Things can't get much worse, it seems, but as well as being a bad salesman, it turns out that Chit is facing a pile of bills from his creditors.

Luckily, the credit on his cellphone is still good and he gets a call from a mysterious person who knows every detail about his life - where he's from, that he's lost his job, how much he owes and that there's a fly buzzing around his head at that exact moment.

The voice explains that Chit can win Bt10,000. All he has to do is pick up the folded newspaper that happens to be lying nearby and swat that fly. Chit completes the task, and the phone rings again.

To win more money, he is told, he has to eat the dead fly.

The deed done, Chit is then informed that there's Bt100 million on offer if he completes 11 more tasks, each growing progressively more degrading and deadly. There's something far worse than a dead fly to consume, and some of the stunts take him to dark places in his memory, cleverly revealing details about his past life.

Chit must play the game for the entertainment of an audience he can't see, following the rules or else forfeiting all the winnings he has accumulated.

But who's behind this game, how they are monitoring Chit and where the audience watching is, remain a mystery, despite the efforts of Chit's friend, Tong (Achita Wuthinounsurasit), who uses her computer skills to hack into the game.

As we watch Chit being put through his paces, there are elements reminiscent of Michael Douglas' breakdown in "Falling Down", Shinya Tsukamoto's "Haze" and the gross-out thriller "Saw". If you're one of the millions who rides a Bangkok city bus every day, you won't be too surprised by a scene where Chit gets in to a fight with a group of school-aged thugs while riding one of those rolling death traps.

And Chit's solution for dealing with those brainless punks who race their motorcycles is intriguing. (Though it is not, it has to be said, a solution that anyone would want to see.)

In the end, there is a moral to this tale. When things finally get out of hand, and someone is killed, we're informed that it wasn't an individual who did the killing, it was all of us - we all failed the victim. In a materialistic society, where the goal is a sleek car, an expensive watch, a hi-tech mobile phone and the instant, no-brainer thrills of reality-television and video games, it's hard to keep our focus on the real prize: simply surviving and living within our means.

Wise Kwai

 The Nation