Forget Cage and Travolta, This Thai Ad is the Only Face/Off You’ll Ever Need

GreynJ United and Thai mobile banking app K Plus are at it again, with a surreal follow up to their award-winning FRIENDSHIT film. And this time around, they’ve taken the combination of deadpan delivery, oddball casting and awkwardness to an even weirder place. And we love it. 

FACE/OFF tackles the awkwardness many Thais feel when it comes with the updates and changes to their favourite apps. As the country’s most downloaded banking app, K Plus (owned by Kasikorn Bank) needed to figure out how to break the news of a brand new look and firmware to nine million people.

Proving that weird really does work, the team at GreynJ United opted not for a dry old explainer video but an absurdist metaphor in which a young man questions the nature of his reality as his girlfriend keeps changing her appearance. Initially unsettled and disturbed as the girl flips through faces, ages, and even genders, the boy eventually concedes that his partner’s upgrades might come in handy after all.

The film is directed by Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit, who makes great use of monotone delivery and low key art direction to create a particularly creepy kind of comedy.  

FRIENDSHIT, the precursor to FACE/OFF, performed particularly well on this year’s award circuit, picking up two Gold Lions and a Silver Lion at Cannes and a Grand Prix at Ad Stars.