Ghost Lab is about two friends, both resident doctors at a Thai hospital, who embark on an ill-fated attempt to prove that ghosts are real. Gla is the charming extrovert who has been working on his Northern Lights project privately for years, his obsession driven by a childhood encounter he can't forget. Wee is the genius introvert who starts out a skeptic, but once the two experience a sighting together he gets on board. When his beloved mother dies, he falls into an obsession as deep as Gla's.
Lots of horror movies have pulled a genre switcheroo near the midpoint or final act. What this movie attempts is possibly even more ambitious: not a genre switch, but a tone switch. Ghost Lab is a supernatural horror movie from beginning to end, but it starts with a tone of horror comedy. Then it segues into supernatural drama for the middle act, and the final act is a straight up WTF supernatural thriller. There is some outstanding acting from the two leads, although you could also create a drinking game based around how often Wee adjusts his glasses. The score is foreboding throughout, which is a bit jarring in the early scenes, but becomes less and less noticeable as the movie's tone intensifies.
One thing that's hard to wrap your head around as a viewer is how likeable these two guys are in the beginning and how thoroughly unlikable they become by the final act, before an ending that asks you to forgive them both. The forgiveness aspect is actually fairly typical of Thai horror, though I don't think I've seen an attempt to wrap it up quite this quickly and neatly before. The idea that all of these impulses can live within the same person is one that sticks with you after the movie ends, and it's a notion that sits uncomfortably close to reality. It's like the movie doesn't want to end ambiguously, and yet still does in spite of itself.
