31 Days of Asian Horror: 13 Game of Death (2006) vs 13 Sins (2014)

Today’s pairing is of the 2006 Thai horror-comedy, 13: Game of Death, and the 2014 US remake, 13 Sins. While I feel that both of the movies have enough to make them two different watches, the rough backstory is the same. A man who is down on his luck receives a mysterious call who promises money if he goes through different stunts, each progressively harder and more degrading as the monetary value rises.

As I said, both films have the same general premise but stray a bit in their execution. While the Thai version is labeled as a comedy, it is noticeably different in tone than the US remake. The US one tends to go a bit darker, ramping up the thriller aspect and making some of the games more gruesome. This difference leads to a very different mindset when going into the movies. In 13: Game of Death, you spend most of the time trying to understand what is happening and what the next thing is going to be. It’s more erratic in its degrees and a lot of the time the games focus on actions that don’t hold a lot more consequence than embarrassment or degrading to him solely, which is much more impactful when the character has already been beaten down by life.

The other major difference between the two is the way that our protagonist is represented. In 13: Game of Death he’s a loner, constantly giving money to his mother, and not a high seller in his company. He’s overshadowed by his coworkers and genuinely down on his luck, lost, and alone. In the remake, he’s a bit more well-off. He has a few bad things that happen in the very beginning that set off everything, but comparatively, he has a much better life. He is in a seemingly great relationship, has a fairly good relationship with his brother. While he does lose his job he talks about how he was a high earner. Most of his debt is that he has other people depending upon him, but they are people active and loving in his life. He’s just not at the level the original main character is. You can kind of see this in the way the scene with the fly varies between the two movies. Phuchit is a fly at the beginning, or at least he perceives himself to be. He’s being constantly swatted down and when he hits the fly with the newspaper, it’s finally him changing and taking charge. Elliot does it because it’s a fun game that can fix his (new) problems easily.

I think it’s one of the major missteps that the remake took in my personal enjoyment of the film. The actions that unfolded felt much more real and understandable coming from the original, and the actions from the remake seemed like something he would already do. This wasn’t someone desperately down on his luck and at his absolute lowest, this was someone who had some bad things happen recently, and got lucky that the game fell into his lap magically. When all of the action comes to a head at the end of the movie, both versions portray the character as remorseful and sorrowful, but it didn’t feel that the remake made me truly feel that he was. He was just more exhausted or he just realized that he took on something much bigger than he expected. It felt like in the original I was rooting for the underdog, and in the remake I was rooting for the annoying character.

-Slight Spoilers-

The ending of the remake is what really sunk the entire thing for me. While I enjoyed the setup of the character in the original more, I was enjoying how different this version was and so it didn’t bother me as much, and was enjoying the film for what it was…until the ending. I just don’t understand the need for all of these remakes to have “happy endings”. Especially in a movie where it already makes sense not to have one. 13: Game of Death’s ending was much more impactful because he had given up everything to do all these horrific things and still at the very end he loses to his dad killing him. In 13 Sins he essentially got away with all of it because he lives. I guess it works for the opposites of the two characters, with the main character in 13 Sins having a rough life, yet not an outright terrible one, but what about his fiance? She gets to live with that type of person not knowing who he is or what he’s done? Is the horror then meant for her? She was barely in the movie to actually be that much of relevance in the writer’s mind that it doesn’t seem like that was the main objective. I will say that the execution of the ending worked a bit more for the remake than the original. The betrayals and surprises were a bit more upsetting because the characters had more bearing and had been setup more than the original. In the original focused on what the dad had done, but he was not an active part of his life during the majority of the movie so when he appears at the end you don’t get the same sense of betrayal, mostly because you barely know it’s him.

I also found that the absence of a character like Tong in the remake was a shame. Since 13 Sins had established him in a pretty good relationship - even at the end - there was no need for a central character like her to be used and to follow him around. Tong served as the constant reminder that there was someone who cared about Phuchit and was constantly trying to get him to come back from the dark and yet he could never see her. Phuchit spends most of his life doing things for others never believing or seeing what is there in front of him, which makes his character much more pitiful. While the US remake aimed to work that into the plot, they didn’t spend enough time to incorporate it well. Most of the time it wasn’t that he didn’t see the fiance as a constant there to help and support, she was just an obstacle in him trying to accomplish each game without being caught.

-End Spoilers-

In the end, I do really like that 13 Sins didn’t try to be 13: Game of Death as much as a lot of other remakes try to. It took the work and made it its own, and some of the character choices and relationships worked much better for a Western audience and the tone they were focusing the move on. 13: Game of Death still outshines Sins in its writing and set up of the characters and pacing for me, but I would still recommend giving both a shot.

Both 13: Game of Death and 13 Sins can be found on Tubi.

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