Created by Parkpoom Wongpoom, the writer-director of Thai horror classic Shutter, Netflix’s intriguing new series once again centres around the auteur’s interest in cameras and the supernatural. Delete starts off with a brilliant opening scene, designed to hook viewers instantly.
A crying schoolgirl walks into a supermarket to ask a stranger to take a photo of her. The confused lady pauses her shopping to accede to the girl’s innocuous request. The distraught teen hands the stranger a device that looks like a regular mobile phone, but when the lady proceeds to snap a picture, the girl’s very essence is sucked into the device. Startled, the woman drops the device, wondering how the girl vanished into thin air.
The story then flashes back a week to introduce us to Delete’s main characters. We follow a gorgeous young couple as they enjoy a romantic getaway on a beachside resort. One is an author named Aim (Nat Kitcharit), famed for a new book which details his harrowing experience of being stranded in a forest as a child. The other is Lilly (Fah Sarika Sathsilpsupa), a gallery owner. What appears to be an innocent holiday takes a turn when we realise that Aim has a loving girlfriend back home named Orn (Aokbab Chutimon Chuengcharoensukying), while Lilly is married to a wealthy businessman called Too (Ice Natara Nopparatayapon).
Although they’ve been keeping the affair a secret, their significant others are getting suspicious. While Orn plants a hidden camera to catch her boyfriend cheating, Too is much scarier – a vindictive and volatile man with means, determined to catch his wife in a lie. Both Aim and Lilly have a lot to lose if the truth gets out. Orn blackmails Aim into dumping Lilly, threatening to scandalise his career by releasing footage of his philandering, while also intimating that she’ll “expose” Aim’s memoir.
Likewise, Lilly is faced with a powerful and violent husband who had previously shot her beloved pet horse just to prove a point. The situation gets even dicier when a nauseous Lilly suspects that she’s suffering from morning sickness.
The pilot comes full circle when Lilly heads to the supermarket to purchase a pregnancy test – revealing that she’s the woman who took the missing schoolgirl’s photo. Aim and Lilly are bewildered and frightened about the existence of the device but their baser instincts kick in when they realise that they can make their problems disappear with the snap of a photo.
Delete posits the question: If you can eliminate someone’s existence, free of consequence, would you? It shouldn’t be a surprise that our leads, desperate to keep their shameful secrets, will be sliding down a very slippery moral slope.
Delete’s biggest strength lies in the mystery of its magical (maybe sci-fi?) MacGuffin. What is it? Where does it come from? Who made it? What are the rules of using it? The allure of the (literal) plot device, and its mythology is gripping. But as clever as the premise is, it’s by no means unique. Delete, at least in the beginning, appears to be a less ambitious version of Death Note – where a genuinely fascinating premise is wasted on soap operatic storylines, cliched characters, visual blandness and sluggish pacing. While the performances from the main cast are passable, the pedestrian dialogue and predictable beats don’t do the actors any favours.
Despite the first episode of Delete being fairly mediocre, it does offer just enough to keep viewers watching. There are hints as to darker aspects of these characters’ backstories that we don’t yet know about, and the mystery of the device is like a brain itch you can’t help but scratch. Hopefully, as more of Delete’s teases are unravelled, this series can finally live up to its premise’s vast potential.