THAILAND GHOST FILM SPARKS OUTRAGE

Holy publicity, Batman. Monsters and Critics are carrying coverage of the latest Thai/Cambodian dust-up. Frequent rivals, the Thai entertainment industry irritated Cambodia in 2003 when a Thai soap star said that Angkor Wat belonged to Thailand, resulting in riots, the burning of the Thai embassy in Cambodia, and the emergency evacuation of Thai citizens from Cambodia. Then it turns out that the actress never made the comment and it was all just a rumor (shades of Manisha Koirala's Muslim-baiting invisible dog).

Now, the Thai movie, GHOST GAME is being released and Cambodia is ticked. The film is about a gang of kids who have to spend the night in an abandoned Khmer Rouge torture camp, resembling (strongly) Toul Sleng prison. The prison turns out to be haunted and the kids are killed one by one. Cambodia allowed filming but only if no reference to actual events - like the Khmer Rouge killing 2 million Cambodians - was made. The GHOST GAME producers decided to stay in Thailand but people who've seen the film think there's no mistake about where it's set or who the ghosts are.

The head of Cambodia's Cinema Department in their Culture Ministry, Kong Kendara, says, "They want people to be scared, but the deaths (of hundreds of thousands of people) is not a game."

Now the movie's Executive Producer has apologized, saying, "“We should have made a clearer distinction between fiction and reality.”