“The Murderer” is a comical Thai whodunit featuring grisly (ish) deaths, goofy, conflicting versions of how they occurred and a grumpy senior cop nicknamed “The Hot-Headed Crime Buster” who tries to sort out the truth from the conclusions he’s more than happy to jump to.

Subtle? Oh no. Amusing? Every now and then.

The Abishek J. Bajaj script mocks Thai superstition and sends up pan-Asian xenophobia about “white people” and “white men” in particular.

Every Thai in this dark comedy (subtitled, or dubbed) throws around that word “farang,” a catch-all term for “white” that can be narrowed to “white man” when you’re talking about Thai women and their “sugar daddies.”

“In the West, we have Social Security,” one plump American farang, Charlie (Jonathan Samson) explains to a Brit (James Laver). “Here, they have ‘farangs.'”

A mass murder has occurred out in the countryside, seven people killed in and around a remote farmhouse. Clumsy, ill-tempered and prejudiced Major Nawat Banluecha (“Ong-bak” alumnus Phetthai Vongkumlao, funny) is in a fury to pin them all on a farang (Laver) that they have in custody.

But Earl’s petite Thai wife, Sai (Eisaya Hosuwan) insists “Earl could not have done that.”

Then what happened? Accidents? Another killer? Demonic possession?

“It’s like that film, ‘Chucky,'” Sai suggests. “Ever see it?”

“Yeah. SCARY.”

And so we wander through conflicting versions of the events of that evening, which ended with seven victims, including the first cop on the scene.

Sai and Earl have their tales. Major Hot-Head barks out his speculations, all of them depicted here.

A child also survived, and she gets to hear how the major got that scar on his head (luridly acted-out in a flashback that riffs on traditional Thai theater) before telling her version of the events of that dark and stormy night.

The killings– never-quite-amusing– could be a sinister plot to cash in on a fresh insurance policy, a series of gruesome accidents, or…something else?

It’s all played broadly enough to feel funny (ish) even when it isn’t. But the pacing is off, and the mystery-solving takes precedence over the comedy, leaving us with a puzzle that might be solved but lacking enough laughs to hold one’s interest for 90 minutes, much less 124.

Rating: TV-MA, bloody deaths, drug abuse, profanity

Cast: Phetthai Vongkumlao, Eisaya Hosuwan, James Laver, Sampong Chaptham, Sawanee Utoomma, Jonanthan Samson and Kuanruean Lohgkad

Credits: Directed by Wisit Sasanatieng, scripted by Abishek J. Bajaj. A Neflix release.

Running time: 2:04