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Category:    Home > Reviews > Horror > Thailand > Sick Nurses (2007/Horror/Thailand/MagNet DVD)

Sick Nurses (2007/Horror/Thailand/Magnet DVD)

 

Picture: C+     Sound: C-     Extras: D     Feature: B

 

 

For fans of Asian horror, the Thai ghost/slasher film Sick Nurses is an easy sell.  Even at first glance, the front cover is a dead giveaway (pun intended) with its copious amounts of stringy straight black hair, very consciously invoking flashbacks to The Ring, The Grudge, and any other of the innumerable Asian/Asian-inspired horror films of the past ten years.  In fact, there are scenes in the film that directly reference some of the most famous scenes from these films.  Think long-haired ghost crawling out of a handbag rather than a TV. The ghost herself is so derivative of the recent Japanese horror flicks, in particular The Ring, that it would be easy to dismiss this movie as a rip-off.  (Snakes on a Train, anyone?)  But if you can put the ghost's appearance aside, and really watch and appreciate the rest of the movie, you'll see that Sick Nurses has more to offer than just a derivative version of what you've already seen a dozen times.

 

To begin, the editing kicks off with a near-postmodern flair, introducing early the images that will become important much later and playing with in and out of flashbacks.  This is sort of a toned-down version of the eerie, dreamlike feel that pervades a lot of the Asian horror films that don't ever get American remakes.  But about ten minutes into the movie, this aesthetic is all but abandoned in favor of what really makes this film appealing.  The film takes the ghost, which is so recognizable as an Asian horror figure, and puts it in an American slasher style plot.  The ghost lurks around the darkened corridors and more than a few bathrooms during the night shift at a hospital and picks off the characters one by one.  The plot is developed in bits and pieces through a few flashbacks that are stuck in among the numerous and increasingly creative deaths*.  And while the plot has a decent twist at the end, it's not really necessary.  The average horror fan would have been satisfied with the throw-away explanation which is the assumption through most of the film.

 

The execution of the film is near-top-notch with a blending of digital and practical effects that compliment and at times even mask each other.  Although, some of the overt digital effects at the climax of the film seem a bit blunt in comparison with the rest of the film, and some digital manipulation of the ghost, while time consuming for the effects team, would have aided greatly in reducing the “Hey look, that chick is spray-painted black” reaction.

 

The picture is presented in anamorphically enhanced 1.78:1 widescreen and was shot on high-quality video.  Fortunately the quality shows through and the fact that it is video generally does not.  The colors are rich which compliments the creative lighting design, a trait increasingly apparent in recent Asian and American horror films.  The high picture quality also enhances the many shots throughout the first half of the film that explicitly show off the actress's figures in their almost fetishistic nurse outfits.

 

The sound is presented in Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround and is of decent quality.  It's not as sharp as it could be, but for this particular movie that is not as much a disadvantage as it would be for others.  This film actually has a startling lack of background music, preferring to stick primarily with an exaggerated room tone combined with spooky sound effects.  Therefore the slight fuzziness of the sound only really comes through when you're paying particular attention to the dialogue.  And since I always recommend watching a film in the original language that it was made in, when you're reading the English subtitles you're not likely to be paying enough attention to the Thai dialogue as to really notice the dip in sound quality.

 

There is a disappointing lack of special features on the disc consisting only of a too-short Making Of featurette and a collection of the same trailers that play before the menu.  The Making Of is surprisingly informative, especially if you pay attention to what is going on in the background but ends too quickly.

 

Overall, the quality of the film indicates that if they had really wanted to, the filmmakers could have made a serious, super-creepy ghost film.  Instead, they chose to gently lampoon horror films from both sides of the Pacific creating the Thai equivalent of Scream, a horror burlesque that manages to be a decent horror film in its own right.

 

 

*On a personal note, every once in a while I will come across an image or sequence in a movie, usually a horror movie, that until I saw it I never knew that I wanted to see it.  One of my favorite examples is the scene in the Italian film Zombi 2 in which a zombie battle a shark underwater.  One of those scenes occurs in Sick Nurses, not for the faint of heart, in which one of the characters, whose bottom jaw and tongue have been removed by chewing scalpel blades, is unceremoniously choked to death on an embalmed fetus.  Yes, it's gruesome, and maybe my appreciation amounts to the sick delight shared almost exclusively by horror fans, but that's really what you watch a movie called Sick Nurses for anyway, isn't it?

 

 

-   Matthew Carrick


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