Lullaby

The scouts

Trauma-as-horror is everywhere now, so the real subversion here would've been restraint—but Thai leans into the genre mashup anyway, which is fine if you're okay with the predictable intersection of refugee narratives and genre catharsis that most festivals are already championing.

Chi Thai demonstrates remarkable formal control in rendering psychological fracture through sound design and negative space; the film's refusal to offer narrative resolution or communal witness sits deliberately within a lineage of European art cinema that interrogates how cinema itself fails marginalized subjects.

The decision to keep the supporting characters as almost abstract presences—never quite present, never quite helping—is what makes this work; it's a single structural choice that transforms what could've been heavy-handed into something genuinely disorienting.

Reviews

Thai uses ever-increasing dread in favor of jump scares and gore, crafting a mesmerizing short that packs a highly disturbing reveal.