| The Forest | |
| Native Name: | ป่า |
| Director: | Paul Spurrier |
| Producer: | Jiriya Spurrier |
| Studio: | Commercial Films Siam |
| Starring: | Wannasa Wintawong Tanapol Kamkunkam Asanee Suwan |
| Cinematography: | Paul Spurrier |
| Editing: | Paul Spurrier |
| Music: | Paul Spurrier |
| Runtime: | 109 minutes |
| Country: | Thailand |
| Language: | Thai Isaan |
The Forest (Thai title: ป่า) is a 2016 Thai supernatural horror film written, directed, shot and edited by English flimmaker Paul Spurrier, with the help of his wife Jiriya, and starring two first-time child actors and Asanee Suwan. The screenplay in its original language form was translated by one Preeyaporn Chareonbutra, who had done likewise with Spurrier's previous Thai film production, P.
The story follows a former monk who has joined the teaching profession and is recently assigned by the education ministry to work at a grade school in a small village of an Isaan rural area, and it also follows one of his students, a bullied girl who encounters a mysterious wild boy in the woods neighboring the village, but this boy is merely wild in the sense of how he lives alone in the forest, subsisting bereft of clothing, tools and shelter, as he otherwise is ever articulate and well kept, like the human embodiment of an idea. The schoolgirl is unable to vocally communicate with anybody except for the forest boy. Her inability to speak has been the subject of ridicule and abuse by her classmates.
To choose the filming location, Paul Spurrier drove 3000km (2,000miles) in Isan, and eventually settled on a school in the city of Udon Thani. He cast the film by auditioning residents, including schoolchildren, from the area.[1]