Death Ride — Death Ride( DVD)
Death Ride (aka VIP Death Seat) is a 2025 Thai film set on a bus. It blends elements of thriller, horror, and action with a few sprinkles of off-key/ toilet humour. Here from International Media Network is a barebones DVD release of the film. Though the case doesn’t tell you this is a Thai film with English subtitles.
The film was directed by Pasit Panitijaroonroj, who has seemingly one other directed only one other picture, 2024’s Black Magic Mask, which he co-directed with Sathanapong Limwongthong.
The film runs at eighty-three minutes, and I’m afraid it’s a decidedly mixed affair in both its pacing and content. It’s clear from the start that the Final Destination films were a big influence on the film; this is blended with Thai sensibilities/ ghost legends.
On the bus, we get a fair selection of Thai characters- a pushy, slightly unbalanced middle-aged man, a selection of teens, a family, a female bus attendant, a little girl, an old woman and a bus driver. But the key/ lead character here is the blue-eyed/ brown eyed Caucasian Nathan Bartling, who is apparently a popular Thai YouTuber, playing the role of Nick, a twentysomething traveller, who has a passion for listening to podcasts about ghosts.
We begin at the bus station, as we’re introduced to the bus passengers. They are mostly focused on a horrid smell, which is seemingly coming from a older lady, who is just looking straight ahead.
The passages are loaded on the bus, with a few sprinkles of wacky toilet humour thrown in. As they get underway, the smell seemingly gets worse, someone dies, the on-board toilet is seemingly haunted, and the passengers get very unsettled.
As I said earlier, what we have here is decidedly a mixed cinematic dish- on the plus side, we get some nicely eerie & tense moments- starting at the bus station, gents, moving onto the bus itself. There are a few effective (enough ) jump scares/ moments of jarring shock.
On the less positive side, the characters, even our lead Nick, are barely painted. The bus itself is too gloomily lit- so it’s often difficult to make out who is who, and who is doing what. The pacing is decidedly mixed- going from quite tense/ eventful, to drifting/ rather bland- even when it’s meant to be likewise. Lastly, some of the buses on the road CGI look very ropy.
As mentioned in my intro, this is a bare bones release- with just the film. The English subtitles are clear enough, as is the Thai audio.
There is certainly a lot you could do with a bus-based horror film, but unfortunately, what Death Ride does with the concept is very uneven/ not great.