‘Someone Special’ review: A therapist gets dangerously close to her patient in mangled Thai genre mash-up

Dir: Petong Sakulchai, Ariel Feng. Thailand. 2026. 110mins

When an artist trying to corral his violent impulses and a conflicted relationship counsellor connect through a bizarre property mishapm it proves to be the catalyst for the mutual healing they both desperately need in Petong Sakulchai and Ariel Feng’s Someone Special. Despite a pair of charming leads and a healthy dose of irreverence, Someone Special never gels at a narrative and thematic level, which neuters any potential impact of Sakulchai’s script and buries any incisive points about modern romance under several layers of stilted blocking and clumsy visual compositions.

The script misses the satirical mark

The New York Film Academy graduates’ feature debut follows several short films by Sakulchai, including zombie horror Exit of the Dead and 2022’s thriller Dead Men Don’t Talk, which both demonstrated his eye for genre material. In Someone Special, which premiered in New York Asian Film Festival, Sakulchai and Feng ping-pong from horror and psychological thriller, to romance and back in a way that recalls Thai cinema’s frequent absurdism – such as in Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke recent A Useful Ghost. Festivals and distributors that found an audience for that film may take an interest here, but Ghost’s broad critical breakout and niche box office success seem less likely for Someone Special. Specialty streamers may also come calling.

Artist Rainn (Sirat Intarachote, 4 Kings) and recently divorced psychologist Sa (Anyarin Terathananpat, The Djinn’s Curse) literally and figuratively fall into each other’s orbit when the floor of Rainn’s studio collapses on Sa’s office directly below him, just as she is attempting suicide. Rainn has weakened the beams in his floor by constantly stabbing it as he works out his rage issues via tportraits of various women. Sa is handling her divorce from Dan (Warawut Brown) badly, fixating on personal items he’s left behind and wallowing in the pain of his infidelity. 

Rainn and Sa become more heavily entwined when one of her patients, Gin (Supanaree Sutavijitvong), who has delusions of a grand romance with Rainn, brutally attackes him over a perceived betrayal. Sa’s guilty conscience results in a promise to help Rainn recover from Gin’s attack. Over the course or several weeks, she analyses him, he affirms her value, and they find some kind of balance for themselves – and love for each other. 

Vigorously scratch the surface, and Someone Special reveals an exploration of co-dependence, emotional trauma and the inherently fraught nature of romantic relationships. Yet it plays as a mangled genre mash-up that never quite manages to effectively balance its various tones and so plays as borderline offensive. There is not a woman who’s not “crazy” in the film: Gin is dangerously erotomaniacal (and most of Sa’s patients are obsessed with men); Rainn’s mother was overbearing and a junkie; Rainn’s randy, potential gallery agent Sharon (Vanessa Herrmann) spends most of her time swanning into his studio in a series of slinky leather dresses; and Sa herself comes off as pathetic, rather than lacking in self-awareness. She’s also simply incompetent, which makes empathising with her a tricky task. Across the board, the script misses the satirical mark with its women, rendering them as eye-roll inducing instead of avatars for pithy commentary.

None of which is helped by often sluggish pacing and an oddly flat sound mix. Yet Intarachote and Terathananpat elevate the material to a degree, both convincing as wounded people learning to trust one another, and find a suitably awkward dynamic that serves the story and makes it compelling in flashes. Sakulchai certanly has a strong eye for genre imagery, and production designer Taweesak Prayursuk has made Rainn’s studio is as brooding as Sa’s office is sunny and optimistic . Yet cinematographers Tanakorn Krailassuwan and AM Picha never truly exploit Bangkok’s slick streets and dark alleys, or forge a language of his own.