Every culture has its cursed hotline: Americans have 1-900-Evil, the Japanese have killer VHS tapes, and Thailand got stuck with 999-9999, a horror movie so desperate to be spooky that it accidentally calls itself collect. Directed by Peter Manus, this Thai horror flick tries to mix teenage pranks, Final Destination–style deaths, and a dash of supernatural mystery, but ends up being more like a prank call from a bored twelve-year-old. Spoiler: the scariest thing about this movie is that someone greenlit it.
Plot: Press 9 for Predictable
Our protagonist, Sun (Hugo Chakrabongse), is the kind of international school student who thinks leadership means pulling pranks and looking vaguely cool while his grades plummet. He leads a clique of stock stereotypes: Meena the vain hottie, Rajit the glasses-wearing geek, Wawa the timid brainiac, and Chi the class clown who will almost certainly die first. Add Moo Priew, the overweight wannabe sidekick who keeps getting rejected, and you’ve got a lineup that screams straight-to-video body count.
Enter Rainbow (Sririta Jensen), a mysterious transfer student with the charisma of a wet umbrella and the backstory of an urban legend fan forum. She casually mentions a cursed number—999-9999—that grants wishes if you dial it after midnight. Of course, everyone laughs, because this is a horror movie and disbelief must be maintained until it’s too late.
Chi, the human redshirt, wishes for a Ferrari. And wouldn’t you know it—he gets one! Unfortunately, karma has a sense of humor: Chi ends up diced in a car wash like a tomato in a Cuisinart after some scorpions join the party. Lesson learned? Nope. Everyone else still makes their dumb wishes like moths to a bug zapper.
The Deaths: Rube Goldberg’s Reject Pile
One of the alleged thrills of 999-9999 is watching the ironic deaths. Except instead of creative, they’re the cinematic equivalent of tripping over a rake.
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Chi: Mauled by scorpions, then throat-slashed in a car wash. A PSA against Ferraris and automated brushes.
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Meena: Wishes to be a Channel V VJ, only to be hanged at a party. MTV never killed this hard.
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Rajit: Wants to be less geeky. Ends up flambéed. Technically, he’s cool now… if you like your nerds well-done.
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Moo Priew: Dreams of losing weight. Achieves it when his organs spill out after falling from a window. Jenny Craig could never.
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Wawa: Aspires to be an astronaut. Gets her head bisected by gears. NASA: Not About Surviving Anything.
Each kill is staged with the subtlety of a sledgehammer. They’re neither scary nor funny—just absurd enough to make you wonder if the crew was winging it with whatever props they had lying around. “We’ve got gears, a pipe, and some scorpions—make it work.”
Sun & Rainbow: A Love Story Written in Crayon
Eventually, Sun gets suspicious. He notices that every time Rainbow flutters her lashes, someone else gets gutted. Yet instead of running for the hills, he decides to fall for her, because nothing says romance like watching your friends die horribly. He even wishes for love, which the curse grants in the form of Rainbow planting a kiss on him.
Sun then decides the best way to save her is by… locking her in a tower with cameras. Nothing creepy about that. He spies on her until he realizes—oops—she’s basically the Grim Reaper’s unpaid intern. Rainbow, it turns out, has been doing this cursed-number trick at every school she transfers to, racking up a body count bigger than the tuition fees.
The finale has Sun dodging a heavy box only to fall on a pipe, because apparently irony is the only thing this movie worships. He dies, Rainbow vanishes, and the audience is left wishing they’d dialed literally any other number for entertainment.
Acting: As Wooden as the Set Pieces
Hugo Chakrabongse as Sun is supposed to be the rebellious ringleader, but he delivers every line like he’s auditioning for a toothpaste commercial. Sririta Jensen’s Rainbow could have been an enigmatic femme fatale, but instead she acts like she’s trying to remember if she left the stove on.
Paula Taylor (Meena) is convincingly shallow, but that may just be because the script gives her nothing else to do. The rest of the cast are placeholders on death row, waiting for their ironic exit. The only performance that stands out is Moo Priew, but only because he dies so spectacularly that you almost applaud the effort.
Direction & Tone: Lost in Translation
Peter Manus directs with all the finesse of someone who thinks a scorpion attack is edgy in 2002. The tone ping-pongs between campy teen drama and wannabe supernatural thriller, never committing to either. It wants to be Final Destinationbut ends up as Final Detention.
The editing is choppy, the pacing drags, and the suspense is about as taut as overcooked spaghetti. Scenes that should feel tense are instead padded with exposition, while the deaths, supposedly the highlight, are shot like safety videos gone wrong.
Themes: Or Lack Thereof
The movie pretends to explore themes of vanity, ambition, and youthful recklessness. But really, it’s just “kids wish, kids die” on repeat until the runtime hits 90 minutes. The cursed phone number concept had potential—after all, who hasn’t dreaded a late-night unknown caller? Instead, it plays like a cautionary tale written by a cranky parent: Don’t stay up late, don’t want things, and for God’s sake, don’t use the phone after midnight.
Special Effects: Sci-Fi Channel on a Bad Day
The gore effects are cheap but occasionally charming in a DIY way. The car wash death is silly enough to amuse, while the organ-spilling gag looks like it came from a butcher’s discount bin. CGI is mercifully limited, but when it shows up, it screams “Windows 98 screensaver.”
The scorpions? Rubber. The pipe impalement? Plastic. The “forbidden number” on the phone? Honestly, scarier than the monster was my old Nokia ringtone.
Final Thoughts: Wrong Number, Try Again
999-9999 is the cinematic version of butt-dialing Satan: awkward, embarrassing, and best forgotten. It squanders an interesting premise on cookie-cutter characters, predictable deaths, and dialogue that sounds like it was machine-translated twice. It’s not scary. It’s not clever. It’s just background noise with subtitles.
The biggest horror? Realizing this film has a cult following. Cults usually involve devotion, ritual, and sacrifice. Watching this movie feels like the sacrifice part.
