There are three things you probably don’t want to mess around with in a Vietnamese horror film – a cursed dress, mysterious water and a dead cat – unfortunately, Ám: Chuỗi Phim Ngắn Linh Dị manages to involve all three.
The film brings together three separate supernatural stories rather than stretching one idea across an entire movie, with Hồng Y Oán, Nước Lặng and Người Hộ Tang (Haunted: The Official Series of Supernatural Short Films) each taking a different approach to ghosts, death and the consequences of doing things you probably shouldn’t be doing.
Three Stories, Three Very Different Problems
The first segment, Hồng Y Oán, revolves around an áo dài made from a piece of fabric carrying a supernatural presence, and after someone wears it, mysterious cuts begin appearing on their body, with the injuries becoming increasingly disturbing as the supposedly white dress gradually turns red with blood.
Then Nước Lặng moves into much darker territory, with brothers Thanh and Cang becoming caught up in a mysterious death and supernatural forces connected to the water, where Cang is gradually drawn towards the water by the ghosts surrounding him, turning what initially appears to be a strange death into something considerably more sinister.
The final segment, Người Hộ Tang, follows Thanh, a funeral worker who spends his life transporting the dead, but things take a very bad turn after he kills a black cat, and the consequences are supernatural, and considering the character’s profession, he probably should have known better than to start messing around with things associated with death and superstition.
The Hồng Y Oán section is probably the most immediately visual of the three, taking something strongly associated with Vietnamese culture and turning it into the source of the horror – the idea of a beautiful white áo dài gradually becoming covered in blood is simple enough, but it certainly gives the segment a very specific visual identity.
The Funeral Worker Has A Problem
Người Hộ Tang might have the strangest setup of the three though, because Thanh already works around death every day – his job involves transporting the dead, so you would think he might be slightly more cautious about supernatural beliefs and the things people traditionally associate with bad luck, but he kills a black cat and ends up experiencing something he really could have done without.
The story then seems to play with the idea of someone who spends his working life helping the dead reach their final destination suddenly finding himself caught up in something that makes his own life increasingly difficult.
Four Directors, One Anthology
The film also has four directors credited – Châu Trần, Phan Hỷ, Nguyễn Hữu Quốc Tuấn and Đỗ Quốc Trung – the cast includes Lê Công Hoàng, Mai Cát Vi, Nguyễn Lê Việt Hưng, Mea Minh Anh and Cao Sang, among others – it was released in Vietnamese cinemas on 7 August 2026.
A Shorter Route Into Vietnamese Horror
Ám: Chuỗi Phim Ngắn Linh Dị is essentially a collection of three bite-sized Vietnamese ghost stories, with each segment giving the filmmakers a chance to take a different piece of folklore, superstition or everyday life and turn it into something nasty.
The three stories also give the film a nice change of pace – just when you’ve spent enough time worrying about the cursed áo dài, you’re suddenly dealing with ghosts in the water, and then someone decides killing a black cat is a perfectly sensible thing to do.
Which, obviously, it isn’t.
Trailer
Check out some more Vietnamese horror movies.
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