Sick Nurses

After the first 15 minutes of Sick Nurses (2007), I was just about ready to give up. I was resigned to sitting through another Asian horror revenge ghost story, complete with a bedraggled long-haired wide-eyed ghost girl. Don't get me wrong; I think Asian horror has been monumental in the evolution of horror cinema. Prior to The Ring, the 2002 American remake of the J-Horror instant classic Ringu (1998), horror cinema in America had been awash in cheap teeny thrillers/slashers and misguided and hackneyed attempts to recapture some mythical retro-magic from '70s and '80s horror. The Ring opened the door for a veritable flood of Asian horror, either straight from the source, or rewritten, repackaged, and re-released to have a more "American" appeal. Miracle of miracles, many of these films were actually scary, instead of just being stupid while trying to be hip, edgy, or self-referentially funny. The tendency for Asian horror to lean towards the strictly supernatural realm of vengeful ghosts, spirits, and demons was a welcome change for an American market glutted with serial killers, psychos, and torture porn.

But the movie biz, whether Japanese, Korean, or American, never seems to know when a good thing has gone too far. Within 5 years, the familiar tropes of Asian horror had been replicated ad nauseum, and it had gotten to the point where most of the films ran together. If you had seen one, you'd seen them all. Yet, Asian filmmakers continued to grind them out, and American distributors continued to pick them up stateside. There have been exceptions, to be sure. Films that for whatever reason have stood out, often despite some inclusion of the worn-out A-Horror tropes. Takashi Miike has consistently set himself apart with bizarrely original fare: Audition (1999), the "MPD Psycho" television series (2000), the extremely strange Visitor Q (2001), and the legendary Ichi the Killer (2001). Also of note are the creepily claustrophobic Infection (2004), and the quietly haunting meta-film Reincarnation (2005).

I'm happy to report that Thai director Piraphan Laoyont's Sick Nurses is another of those exceptions. It's true that Laoyont uses many of the tired A-Horror themes I've come to loathe: a vengeful spirit, long bedraggled hair that hides the face, and the creeping malaise that supplants America's blood and guts, and often marks the action in Asian horror. But it turns out the film is much more than that, leaning heavily on themes from early Cronenberg body horror and Tim Burton's uniquely surreal and macabre vision. What emerges is a dreamlike vision, deftly stretching the events of 15 minutes, using overlapping scenes, flashbacks, and a seemingly unrelated story tangent to slowly fit the movie's central puzzle together.

In Sick Nurses, a young doctor controls a personal harem of nurses at a spooky hospital, using them as pawns in both his sexual fantasies and his black market business selling cadavers. But when jealousy rears its ugly head, the nurses murder one of their own, Tawan, to keep her from spilling the beans on their illegal activities. According to Thai legend, her spirit has 7 days to take revenge on her murderers. It's a quarter to midnight on the 7th day, and while the young doctor is out peddling Tawan's corpse to his usual buyers, the remaining nurses settle down for the night in the hospital dorms, content that Tawan's spirit is at rest. They couldn't be more wrong. The nurses are about to be caught in Tawan's sadistic web of horrifying revenge, as the spirit turns each nurse's biggest conceit into her doom.

Unlike many Asian horror films that eschew blood and gore entirely, Sick Nurses embraces it with an interesting mix of sadistic glee and satirical mirth. Tawan's spirit is a deliberate parody of the Asian ghost, taking sick delight in psychological torture and horrible mutilation. The film is bursting with deliciously inventive Cronenberg-esque death scenes reminiscent of Videodrome (1983), The Brood (1979), Rabid (1977), and The Fly (1986). Sick Nurses plays like a fairy tale, a dark and macabre fable warning against the stereotypical faults and conceits of pretty young women: eating disorders, exercise obsessions, cell phone addiction, shopaholism, and above all, sexual misconduct. That it plays on themes that are as old as society itself makes it no less entertaining. The film is carried by an exceptional script, solid visuals, and a frenetic pace. And hot Thai nurses in various skimpy outfits.

Storyline & plot: 8/10
Cinematography & effects: 8/10
Music & mood: 7/10
Performances: 5/10

The Reverend says: 7/10