The Irish Lorcan Finnegan has been configuring in a short time a most disturbing universe. He began in genre cinema a decade ago with the short film Foxes, followed by his debut in the feature film Without name, about a land supervisor who discovers a dark secret in the forest, and in 2019 he attracted attention at the Sitges Festival with Vivarium , with Imogen Poots and Jesse Eisenberg as a couple buying their first home and a strange sales agent leads them to a mysterious housing estate from which they cannot escape.
This Friday, already in the final stretch of the contest, the director has presented Nocebo, another claustrophobic film that delves into the relationship between family and servitude, while serving as social criticism, with a most original story that highlights the extraordinary performances by French Eva Green and Filipino actress Chai Fonacier.
The film, which premiered in Europe today in Sitges and is the first co-production between Ireland and the Philippines, is a nightmare that mixes ghost stories from Southeast Asia with that of intruders who kindly break into houses in the style of the nanny of Rebecca De Mornay in The Hand That Rocks the Cradle.
Here, former Bond girl Green has a blast playing Christine, a children’s fashion designer who lives in a mansion with her husband Felix (Mark Strong) and their young daughter. During a fashion show, someone insistently calls her cell phone and when she answers, she receives news that upsets her. But it will not be the only thing that disturbs her at that moment because before her eyes appears an old and flea-ridden dog that begins to shake her off and one of her ticks ends up directly on the protagonist’s back.
Eight months later, Christine sleeps on a ventilator and suffers from panic attacks, hallucinations and tremors. She tries to return to the job market by putting on some random red shoes that should bring her luck, although things are not going to turn out as she expected. One day Diana knocks on her door, a Filipino woman who says she has been hired by her, but Christine does not remember her. She has memory problems and a lot of headaches.
Neither the girl nor the husband receive the assistant with pleasure. Trying to be nice, Diana cooks them hearty stews and helps Christine calm her upset. It won’t take long for her to gain her trust and she will end up revealing to him that she is the owner of a magical power with which she can cure her illness. And for this she must penetrate inside her as the only possible remedy to find the origin of evil. Parasites are not far away.
Finnegan knows how to attract the viewer’s attention in a manipulation game that leads us to witness the assistant’s past and learn the real reason for her mission. The film is not only a good example of a horror film with the most tense and nightmarish scenes – the giant tick that approaches Christine in her dreams – its best asset lies in a context of labor exploitation that will make more than one person blush. textile business.
Nocebo is a pleasant surprise that could well sneak into the list of winners of this 55th edition with the recognition of both Finnegan’s direction and that of its leading actresses.
