Pee Mak’s unofficial takings could be as high as a billion baht, as the 500 million figure includes only the grosses from Bangkok and the central provinces. By a significant margin, it’s the most popular movie in Thai cinema history, a position it achieved more swiftly than anyone could have imagined, especially considering that it’s only the latest in a long line of previous Mae Nak movies.
The story of Mae Nak has been filmed almost twenty times before, and has been adapted into musicals, an opera, and numerous television dramas. Mae Nak, Thailand’s most famous ghost, is an icon of folklore and popular culture.
The legend of Mae Nak is a simple story of young love, with a twist. Mak leaves his pregnant wife, Nak, to fight in a war. When he returns, Nak and their new baby are waiting for him, though the local villagers try to warn him that Nak is not what she seems. Eventually, Mak discovers Nak’s corpse buried near their house, and, when he sees her stretch her arm down to the ground, he realises that she is a ghost. Nak insists that her love for her husband means that she cannot rest in peace without him, though a Buddhist monk finally exorcises her spirit.
Pee MakPhraKanong expands the original story to include four of Mak’s friends who return with him from the war. In this new version of the legend, it is his fellow soldiers, rather than Mak himself, who discover Nak’s secret. The story has undergone a genre conversion: Pee MakPhraKanong is more of comedy than a horror movie. Nak does not kill anyone this time, and Mak’s mates provide some broad humor. There are also some comic anachronisms, to bring the story up to date for contemporary audiences. Mak, for instance, declares that his nickname should be Westernized and pronounced “Mark”.