Weerasethakul has stated that Mysterious Object at Noon was inspired by the Surrealists' "Exquisite Corpse". Weerasethakul bills himself as a story editor rather than a director on this film. Several people narrate a story about a young boy, elaborating on different parts of the story or the characters. The film is not quite a documentary as much as it could called an assemblage of different narrators alternating with observations of life in the Thai countryside. While the first woman who begins the story needs to be prodded, the film ends with children who enthusiastically add detail on top of detail.

The more widely seen Tropical Malady is somewhat more conventional, but also achieves direction by indirection. There is an early scene where one of the characters, Tong, is flirting with a young woman on a bus. From there the film emphasises the soldier Keng's flirtatious pursuit of Tong. Weerasethakul wanders between scenes of Keng wandering through Bangkok and Tong with his country neighbors. Most of the first half of the film takes place during the day, ending with Tong and Keng kissing each other's hands and Tong seen disappearing into the night. This ending provides a kind of seque to the second half which takes place almost entirely at night. Weerashethkul uses Thai folklore as a beginning point with Keng hunting, or being hunted by, a tiger that may have the spirit of Tong. The second half also owes some of its visual style to Henri Rousseau with its people and creatures barely seen peeking out of the jungle, while Weerasethakul also cites Jacques Tourneur. In spite of the idiodsyncratic and personal nature of Weerasethakul's storytelling, Tropical Malady is understood more on an intuitive than intellectual level.