Both of us liked Uncle Boonmee quite a bit so when director Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s latest film appeared on the lists of the most notable works of 2015, I made it a top priority. It shares the same lead actress, Jenjira Pongpas, as the previous film and even covers some of the same themes. Unfortunately despite trying hard to find something to like about it, I have to say that this one’s a dud.

Housewife Jenjira volunteers in her free time at a makeshift hospital housed in a building in which she herself once went to school. The patients there are all soldiers, afflicted by some mysterious illness that causes them to sleep most of the time. She befriends a young woman named Keng who claims to be a medium and helps the sleeping soldiers communicate with their loved ones who come to visit them at the hospital. In the meantime, the doctors install machines that are supposed to help the patients have untroubled dreams. As these machines consist of vertical tubes of light that continuously cycle through various colors, this lends the ward an eerie air. After Jenjira makes offerings at a local shrine, the two goddesses who are venerated there take physical form and pay a visit to her. They explain that the hospital was built over a cemetery and the ancient kings who ruled here still calls upon the spirits of the soldiers to fight on their behalf, thus causing the symptoms.

Though a couple of scenes are arguably effective, most of the film simply falls flat to me. As simple as it sounds, I think a big reason for that is that almost of it takes place in broad daylight. Uncle Boonmee mostly took place at night so that the darkness and deliberately low video quality helped to enhance the creepy atmosphere and obscure the cheap special effects that were used. Cemetery of Splendour on the other hand has no special effects to speak of. The goddesses are just Thai women in ordinary street clothes and even Jenjira fails to recognize them for who they are until after they say so. It’s hard to evoke any sense of eeriness in the harsh light of day and apparently the audience is expected to exercise their imaginations to their fullest to buy into what’s going on. Frankly this is asking too much of the audience and so the film descends into camp. The scene for example in which Jenjira and Keng walk through the park outside the hospital and Keng describes what she sees as an ancient palace fails for this reason. Given the proper mood, perhaps it could have worked but as filmed it looks like two women having an afternoon walk and even the actresses seem to have a hard finding anything mystical about the experience.

Many of other elements in the film seem either irrelevant or else are references that I can’t recognize because I lack the requisite background in Thai culture. The fact that Jenjira’s husband is a retired American who she seemingly married for financial security seems like an important detail yet he barely appears in the film. I don’t understand the nature of the relationship between Jenjira and the soldier she takes care of. If Jenjira has any significant character development over the course of the film, I’m not sure what it is. The only merit that I can perceive is that it weaves in elements of the supernatural into everyday life in a manner that isn’t necessarily antagonistic, but that’s the same thing that Uncle Boonmee and in such a superior manner than doesn’t seem like it has any reason to exist. This unfortunately makes this a completely missable film.