I’ve always had a soft spot for Asian horror that gets into the really nasty side of local supernatural beliefs, so Kong Tao caught my attention pretty quickly, as it seems this isn’t just another Thai ghost movie either, despite sometimes being described that way – this is a Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand co-production, and it digs into Kong Tao, the Southeast Asian belief in black magic and curses, rather than simply giving us another haunted house and calling it a day.
The film is also apparently the result of around three years of research into occult practices, which makes me more interested than I probably should be.
And the basic idea is pretty grim.
A Curse, a Property Developer and a Lot of Dead People
At the centre of the story is Song Longchen, a property developer who secretly uses Thai black magic, or Kong Tao, to help him take control of valuable land, which sounds like the sort of business decision that is going to come back and bite you.
People of course begin dying under mysterious circumstances, although the authorities don’t immediately connect the deaths to anything supernatural, and meanwhile, Fon, a Thai journalist, becomes suspicious and starts looking into what is really happening – there’s also another storyline involving four young social-media creators who travel to Thailand to film supernatural phenomena and traditional rituals. After returning home, strange things begin happening to them as well.
Fon eventually suspects that they have become victims of Kong Tao and seeks help from Master Bai, a monk with knowledge of the supernatural, so you’ve basically got corrupt property development, black magic, unexplained deaths, journalists, influencers and a spiritual battle between opposing forms of magic.
That’s quite a lot to squeeze into 91 minutes.
Trailer
Two Directors and a Proper Pan-Asian Cast
Kong Tao is directed by Yong Choon Lin and Peiji Goh, with the film running for approximately 91 minutes – it opened in Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei on March 19, 2026, before reaching Taiwan on April 2 and other territories afterwards – and the cast is a proper regional mixture, with Kao Supassara Thanachat, Philip Keung, Bront Palarae, Glenn Yong, Yumi Wong, Mayiduo, Eric Lay, Tony Eusoff, Freddie Wong and Dato Chiah Chye Kee among the cast.
I like this sort of casting for a film like this because it makes the movie feel less tied to one country’s horror industry, as you’ve got Malaysian, Singaporean, Thai and Hong Kong talent all thrown into the same supernatural mess, which actually suits the subject matter.
Kong Tao Isn’t Just a Made-Up Movie Monster
The word Kong Tao refers to a form of black magic associated with curses and supernatural manipulation, and the film’s own promotional material makes a point of presenting it as a folk cultural practice rather than simply a fictional horror invention, and I would say that’s important because the movie isn’t really using the supernatural in the same way as a standard possession film.
The central idea is that Kong Tao can supposedly be used to harm someone from a distance, while other forms of spiritual practice can be used for protection or healing, and the film then builds its story around the consequences of people choosing to use those powers for selfish reasons.
The old idea of what goes around comes around is basically being given a supernatural makeover, and when your main character is a property developer using black magic to grab land, you don’t exactly need a complicated moral lesson to work out where this is heading.
There’s More Than One Kind of Horror Here
One thing I noticed about Kong Tao is that the supernatural material isn’t completely separated from ordinary greed – Song Longchen isn’t apparently performing black magic because he wants to summon Satan or become immortal. He’s doing it because he wants land.
The horror is therefore tied to something completely mundane – property, money and power are things people already fight over without supernatural assistance, and the film asks what happens when somebody decides to add black magic to the equation.
It reminds me slightly of the way some Indonesian folk-horror films use pesugihan, where supernatural bargains are made in exchange for wealth or success – the details are different, but I like that general idea of greed having a supernatural price attached to it.
Except here we’re apparently going considerably further.
They Didn’t Just Make This in a Studio
The production was filmed across Malaysia and Thailand, with locations including Batu Caves, where actors Glenn Yong and Eric Lay reportedly experienced some genuinely strange incidents while shooting – now, I’m always slightly suspicious when actors come out with stories about weird things happening on horror sets, as half the time it’s probably somebody hearing a noise in a dark corridor and deciding they’ve been cursed.
But Batu Caves is a pretty spectacular location for this sort of film, and using real spiritual and religious locations rather than building everything on a soundstage gives the movie something physical to work with, and the production apparently involved a fair amount of research into black magic as well, which is probably why the filmmakers have been talking about the film as more than just a collection of jump scares.
The Film Apparently Found an Audience
Kong Tao did particularly well in Malaysia after opening on March 19. Within its first week it reportedly passed RM3 million at the Malaysian box office, making it the highest-grossing local Chinese-language horror film in Malaysian history at that point.
That’s actually pretty impressive.
It also tells me there was clearly an audience for this sort of supernatural material before the film even started travelling internationally, and considering Asian horror fans are always complaining that regional films don’t get enough international attention, I’m glad something like this has managed to travel beyond its original market.
This Is One I’d Give a Chance
I’m not going to pretend that every black-magic horror film works for me, as some of them get so obsessed with explaining the mythology that they forget they’re supposed to actually be scary, but Kong Tao has enough going for it that I’d definitely give it a go.
The combination of black magic, land grabbing, unexplained deaths, journalists and a group of influencers who decide filming supernatural rituals is probably a sensible career move is a pretty good starting point, and I also like the fact that the movie isn’t pretending the folklore is just decorative background material. Kong Tao is the actual engine of the story.
The Malaysia–Singapore–Thailand production is another reason I’m interested, because ou don’t get quite as many horror films that bring together this much regional talent and then build the story around supernatural beliefs that cross borders anyway.
Whether the film manages to balance all of that with the actual horror is the big question for me, but a property developer using black magic to steal land and accidentally creating a trail of mysterious deaths is such a wonderfully terrible idea that I’m willing to find out.
And if the film delivers on those occult scenes, it could be a pretty good little addition to the 2026 Asian horror pile.
Check out some more Malaysian horror movies.
Check out some more Thai horror movies.
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