Mekong Hotel

Where to watch

Trailer

Mekong Hotel

2012

แม่โขงโฮเต็ล

Directed by Apichatpong Weerasethakul

Shifting between fact and fiction in a hotel situated along the Mekong River, a filmmaker rehearses a movie expressing the bonds between a vampire-like mother and daughter.

Cast Crew Details Genres Releases

59 mins   More at IMDb TMDB Report this page

Popular reviews

More
Maria
Review by Maria ★★★★½ Liked

"All characters appearing in this work are actual persons. Any resemblance to other real beings, living or dead, is not coincidental."

A guitar accompanies conversations, memories, and life by a haunted riverside hotel. A modest portrait of melancholy & the peaceful flow of the river & the ever surrounding and inhabiting spirits.

meyi
Review by meyi ★★★½

it's like a calmful drowsy haunting therapeutic experience

Chris 🍉
Review by Chris 🍉 ★★★★★ Liked 2

“The water’s not listening.”
“Who will it listen to?”


The most mellow and peaceful film about a flesh eating ghost ever made… and despite its languid pace and short runtime it still manages to be so dense. A lot of thoughts bouncing around in my head about how the flesh eating mother-spirit talks about her thoughts around Thailand’s government, monarchy, and experience with the military compared to how her daughter and her boyfriend (in some extent) talk about politics and especially the monarchy. Even my rudimentary knowledge about Thai history and politics helped inform this watch so I wonder how much more I’d get out of it if I was more intimately familiar with the country’s history. Laos’s war torn…

Sethsreviews
Review by Sethsreviews ★★★★ 3

Weerasethakul Is one of the most interesting filmmakers working today. This is yet another striking viewing; so tranquil yet hauntingly mournful, all wrapped in a relaxing, inviting melody. A reflection on memory and loss, similar to much of his other works, which, despite being only 60 minutes long, is filled with spiritual allegories. A film that feels utterly hallucinatory in ways that I struggle to fully describe.

Dave G
Review by Dave G Liked

The guitar strumming that plays over a lot of this works so well and honestly may have been my favorite part of the movie. Slow but a little surprising at times. And interesting look at things like loss and memory. Won't be for everyone though, that's for sure.

Harrison Wade
Review by Harrison Wade ★★★★★ Liked

Stuck in the hotel above the river that keeps rising, a movie is being made about a Pob ghost, her daughter, and her daughter's lover. The story lasts for years. The Pob takes possession of each of them, for a shot. They all die, at times. But the actors never change clothes and most of Mekong Hotel seems to work in a documentary mode. Jenjira Pongpas talks about her youth, a militant nationalism, and movements across the Thai-Laos border. A guitar player practices for the soundtrack, his playing only ever interrupted over the hour-long runtime when he makes a mistake and laughs, or a new recording starts. When he does, the border of the image ruptures, to let in two…

🐱Andrew Chrzanowski🐱
Review by 🐱Andrew Chrzanowski🐱 ★★★

☆"I know I will be reborn as a horse, and several kinds of insects."☆

Considered by some a short film, nonetheless running around an hour which would constitute a feature (albeit a briefer one than usual), Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Mekong Hotel floats between drama and documentary, sliding nicely into an unclassifiable genre of art much like his debut work, Mysterious Object at Noon.

Meta in several ways -- including an opening scene of the director himself auditioning a classical guitar player, and another with actors seemingly preparing for their roles -- it also quite clearly is a "Joe" film, beautifully shot and composed, paced with slow and purposeful moments of reflection, and featuring bizarre instances of magical realism and apparitions accepted…

Anastasia ✄
Review by Anastasia ✄ ★★★★½ Liked 2

Apichatpong Weerasethakul caresses your soul for a little bit less than an hour with his gentle filmmaking. Cinema has never been as soulful as it is in his hands. Souls connected by their physical place and concepts of time is cool and all, but Weerasethakul's underlying string of melodies of their past and their true selves in the form of art is what truly connects them. There are bits of tender melancholy, the joyous mundane, and stories about ghosts and monsters (sometimes even backed up by visuals) that could not have been more human. Touching with its simplicity and how emotionally fragile and honest it is in front of the viewer.

emma katharine
Review by emma katharine ★★★★ 1

weerasethakul's films are the closest one can come to religion outside of a temple, i think

Patrick Brennan
Review by Patrick Brennan ★★★★½ Liked 2

The lackadaisical pace, beautiful magic hour digital cinematography and pleasant, constant acoustic guitar music distract from the fact that this is a movie that features Pob ghosts eating entrails and possessing people. I'm not entirely sure why I walked out of this movie when it was over and felt moved, but I did. The way Weerasethakul feels that the characters talking about floods in Bangkok and Laotian immigration is just as interesting as watching people covered in blood, eating animal organs, if not moreso, is strangely life-affirming.

mumon
Review by mumon ★★★½ 3

„My ass hurt rather pleasurably.“

The motto of slow cinema, amirite?

In all seriousness, though, my first Weerasethakul feature film is thematically very close to his short Ashes (2012) of the same year in its preoccupation with the nature of memory at its center. And as random as the above quote might seem, I do feel it a bit after watching this. Because while I did not actually sit down very long for this (the movie is just over an hour) and the sitting wasn‘t really painful, I did become aware of it due to the movie’s contemplative pace and non-linear and elliptical narrative.

But the pleasure is in finding what‘s beyond and beneath the frame, so here we can…

Mentioned by