The first two acts make the movie feel like a typical low-budget horror film with all the familiar Blumhouse-like tropes that include jump scares, mysticism, spiritual lore, shady romance, and scary images of long-haired ghosts.

This all changes in the last act, where the twist blows all expectations and horror stereotypes away. There is no spiritual element--all ghosts are representations of the protagonists' inner-guilt and fear over what she had experienced in the past. Also, aIl paranormal events are set up by the victims' family in order to extract the truth from our protagonist--from the surveillance bug inside the creepy doll, the the maid that would mess up the spiritual room to make it look like the demon baby did it. I would say the shocking reveals are almost on par with the final reveal from The Sixth Sense in that a second viewing of the film creates a different means to enjoy the entire movie.

The most controversial element though, is in how the protagonist is treated. She is a victim of rape but is also "narratively punished" in the end (she commits suicide) after having withheld information that could have revealed the evil men that motivated the pop star's suicide (they raped her). I would like to offer a contrarian viewpoint. I don't think the filmmakers believe she deserved to die. On the contrary, I think the film is portraying the bleak nature of falling victim to great evils, while showing how the pursuit of fame and glory lead to a dead end of sorts.

What I absolutely do hate though, is the last 5-10-minutes of the film where the protagonist's best friend becomes a social media star yet rejects an offer from a modeling agency, all so that she can "finish school". This arc is unnecessary and takes a piss on a powerful ending. Secondly, the fact that this character (who is not model-like at all) becomes a model is completely unmotivated. The overall message of this film is completely hijacked by this contrived epilogue.

Honestly I thought it's a boring horror movie until the twist in the end. Then I thought this is such a touching love story where everyone bond together to provide some justice for the poor gal. I love a good revenge tale. :) I'm still puzzled if it's the ghost or her hallucination at the end.

I hadn't heard about this 2021 Vietnamese movie titled "Thiên Than Ho Menh" (aka "The Guardian") from writers Kay Nguyen and Victor Vu prior to sitting down in 2023 to watch it. I stumbled upon the movie by random luck, and with it being an Asian horror movie that I hadn't seen, of course I opted to sit down and watch it.

Well, half of it anyway. Running at 127 minutes, this movie was slow paced, boring and uneventful. I have to say that it was quite a struggle to sit through just more than an hour of virtually nothing happening. Well, nothing in terms of being a proper horror movie that is. If you want to watch a drama movie about pop singers laced with some supernatural folklore, then this is a movie for you. If you watch it for a horror movie, you're in for a sore disappointment.

The storyline in the movie was just lacking drive and force. It took director Victor Vu forever to go nowhere. And I mean that literally. I gave up on watching the movie just after 1 hour into the ordeal. I just simply couldn't take more of the torment that is "Thiên Than Ho Menh", because nothing happened.

The acting performances in the movie seemed good enough. However, I wasn't really buying into what was happening on the screen, given the mind-numbingly slow pace of the narrative, and the fact that the script had zero appeal or horror contents. I wasn't familiar with the cast ensemble in the movie.

Visually then you're not in for any particular outstanding treat here.

I have zero intentions of returning to waste yet another hour on this movie, because there was nothing to entertain me here. If you enjoy Asian horror movies, do yourself a favor and give "Thiên Than Ho Menh" a wide berth.

My rating of "Thiên Than Ho Menh" lands on a three out of ten stars, and that is mostly based on the production value of the movie and the acting in general.