The Motel Mistress stands tall beside a highway on the outskirts of Bangkok. The adult-oriented love accommodate caters to the freakiest of the freaks under the soft glow of the hotel’s purple-pink neon marquee that’s shimmers on the rooftop during the tantalizingly active nightlife, flickering to a more conspicuous Motel Mist, but during the day, the near vacant hotel sits dormant and has scarce use. That’s all about to change when four visitors and one Hotel Mist front desk man become five strangers entwined into an uncanny affair that begins with illicit sexual desires between an extremely perverted and dangerous middle-aged man and a young school girl with ulterior motives and ends with a former child star’s refuge into, what he believes, is communications from beings not of this Earth. Salacious deviances, revenge, and strange occurrences check into the Hotel Mist, but will the five strangers check out?

From the erotically charged DVD cover from Philadelphia based home video distribution company, Breaking Glass Pictures, the Truevisions Original Pictures in coproduction with the 185 Films and Song Sound Productions produced “Motel Mist, written and directed Prabda Yoon, has the irrefutable markings of an unforeseen science fiction thriller from Thailand. Yoon’s introductory 2016 picture initially dodders on various genre borders that venture into the human complexities of interaction from an alienation or a subversive standpoint and wholeheartedly whips 180 degrees merging into exacting revenge and experiencing unearthly dimensions to an inevitable mesh correcting what’s characteristically abnormal. Though sexual romps in one-night-stand lodges have been marketed as quite the norm in Bangkok, Yoon pushes the creepy factor limits to the max, turning the dial on predatory intentions to an unreal reality.

The focus surrounds five characters with dialogued roles. The characters, with the exception of two of them, are essentially from all walks of life: a young hotel concierge with ambitions to be a fire stick performer, a middle-aged man with duel façade, a child star with unknown psyche complications, and then there are the school-aged girls with relatively the same motivation, but of a diverse personality type. We’re gently introduced to the middle-aged father figure Sopol, played by Surapol Poonpiriya, gazing at a newscast about a missing child celebrity on a car onboard touchscreen. Poonpiriya reels in slowly a conservative, perhaps even old-fashioned, fatherly figure where children shouldn’t swear and nose deep in cell phones isn’t a proper and good thing, but then the actor yanks hard back on the spoke, settling his character into a blurry role between niceties and deviances. Sopol’s an abhorrent wolf in sheep’s clothing, lavished and proud of his alternate life of an older man whose been with many younger women in his prefabbed BDSM motel room. His latest fair object is Laila, a young school girl in a short skirt with fresh innocence splayed from head to toe, performed by Prapamonton Eiamchan. Laila goes with the Tot’s flow by guiding her every move and letting him manipulate her like a doll of his pleasure. Eiamchan’s curious portrayal befalls her character’s with a relationship with masochism because of a more deep rooted motivational factor and the dynamic between Eiamchan and Poonpiriya pulls at the unsettling strings while also teasing visceral fantasies. Yet, oddly enough, Vasuphon Kriangprapakit cerebral performance being an antenna for alien correspondence is more intriguing. Kriangprapakit’s Tul is the crucial focal point that connects each character, playing against their vices that shepherds into a more savior role; in fact, Kriangpapakit could be considered appearing like the Thai version of the Messiah. While Tul requires a force invading into one’s mind bubble, Tot bubble seems to have popped with vague ambitions and being an overall motel lackey. Tot, a role suited for the talented Wissanu Likitsathaporn, sports green hair atop his punk rock outfit, and, like today’s typical millennial, enjoys conversing on the phone, especially with women. His sympathetic qualities aim to grant him amnesty for his cooperative nature, especially assisting covertly alongside Sopol, and being an agent of greed when figuring out his other daytime tenant, Tul, has a reward for his whereabouts. Katareeya Theapchatri rounds out the cast as Laila’s accomplice, Vicky.

As the subtitle insists, “Motel Mist” is a setting where there are no limits. Whereas that’s true for unlimited sexual pleasures and displeasures as well as thematics akin to the “Outer Limits,” “Motel Mist” has some limitations to challenge the experimental engine on which the film is powered. For one, the takeaway message has vague variables and not enough outright exposition to grasp viewers by the balls for that deep-in-thought, chin scratching moment that ekes forward the turning giant wheels in our heads, spinning conclusions and possible theories into plausible themes. For me, the takeaway message borders somewhere along the lines of the mysterious mechanics of the cosmic universe righting the wrongs between inherently misguided human faults and interactions. Whether that notion weighs in with any truth or not is most certainly up for grabs and could possibly way off the marker, but the enigmatic complexities are what make films, like “Motel Mist,” interesting to dig into and explore.

Breaking Glass Pictures calls for room service and has delivered “Motel Mist” onto DVD home video presented on a DVD9 with a widescreen, 2.39:1 aspect ratio and the region 1 Sci-Fi/Thriller runs just under two hours at 117 minutes. Often with a warm resemblance to Bangkok atmosphere, Yoon also seizes every opportunity with a vast color palate to shape the character developments in Room 7 with sultry red and Room 5 with a sterile black and grey. No problematic issues from a nice sharp picture in natural lighting juxtaposed a vivdly colorful. The frame work, by cinematographer Chananun Chotrungroi, captures micro stories with such aggression that it becomes a thing of beauty and with Yoon’s long takes, the sensation, no matter how unpleasant, lasts what seems to be an eternity. The Thai language stereo 2.0 dual channel audio mix has clean range and depth with parameters around mid-to-high levels of output through the variations of dialogue, ambient, soundtrack, and miscellaneous distortion tracks. There are English subtitles available and while seemingly translated okay, the yellow font coloring blend way too much into the background, making reading them difficult. Special features include a pair of behind the scenes with cast & crew and a trailer. Common perceptions of Bangkok could be extracted out entirely from director Prabda Yoon’s “Motel Mist” with a taste of illicit sexual affairs and the super bizarre in this unique science fiction thriller.