HA NOI — A Vietnamese horror film directed by Le Van Kiet, Ngoi Nha Trong Hem (The House in the Alley), has received invitations to join several US film festivals after its trailer was posted last month on the entertainment website the Internet Movie Database.

The festivals included New York's Tribecca Film Festival – one of the world's largest, which began in the wake of the September 11 attacks – as well as the Seattle International Film Festival and Houston's Fantastic Festival, which seeks horror films from around the world.

The film features Rebel and Clash star Ngo Thanh Van and Tran Bao Son, and is expected to be released on Valentine's Day.

The trailer appeared on the IMDb website after Twitchfilm, one of the world's leading websites for horror films, commented that people had forgotten the appeal of horror films as date movies.

Vietnamese writer-director Kiet will bring scary suspense to Viet Nam's screens on Valentine's Day in his latest feature.

"The freshly released trailer is raw in all the right ways, the dominantly handheld camera work dropping you right into the middle of the action and the atmosphere seems bang on," the Twitchfilm website said.

The film focuses on the tragic miscarriage a young couple endure, when after a long stint in hospital, the wife returns home and is tormented by the loss and begins acting strangely. Their house also undergoes a bizarre transformation. The husband, despite trying to help, becomes increasingly frantic, and when things get out of control, the couple are forced to fight together and find out what is happening to their house. — VNS