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Rating: It is shameful. It is shameful that this film was not released in Italy, in favor of garbage like "The Park" or "Face".
It is shameful that due to its lack of popularity, only 50 people scattered around the world have seen the film, with 42 of them completely unaware and physically threatened. And it is even more shameful that almost no one is aware of the ever-flourishing art of Thai horror.
In an era where American horror cinema is completely in crisis and has been dead for four or five years already, and where France strikes hard without holding back on blood, everything appears simpler, easier, and flourishing in Thailand. For some years now, this Southeast Asian state has been churning out horror films at a rapid pace, reaching hundreds per year. It ranges from classics like "Shutter" (2004): a dense, beautiful horror, excellently packaged with continuous twists, to bottom-tier films like the unwatchable "Seven Days In A Coffin" (2003).
Just like in Japan and 1980s Hong Kong, in 2000s Thailand, horror cinema has recognized a ramification of sub-genres, facets, and different ways to portray fear. There are the influences of Japanese ghost stories, as in the captivating "Alone" (2007) or the already mentioned "Shutter", as well as the more powerful splatters (that make various Saw/Hostel/Martyrs look like child’s play), such as the "Art Of The Devil" saga that delves into local folklore and the art of black magic, where the true art is to close eyelids using sharp, very sharp safety pins affixed to the skin, all the way to the CAT III borrowed from HK: with spraying blood and naked and libertine women (real flowers).
And among the various, endless Thai-horror products of the year 2007, here emerges this little gem of only 73 minutes, titled "Sick Nurses".
Now, there are many negative reviews of the film flooding the internet, balanced by an equally large amount of positive reviews. And here's the catch: "Sick Nurses" is a true gem, if not a masterpiece of the genre, but it risks being misunderstood and misinterpreted.
The story is simple and seemingly derivative:
in a Thai clinic with neon lights shifting between fuchsia and violet hues, seven nurses (all beautiful, shapely, and wearing very short nurse uniforms with great potential as future Oriental Moana Pozzis) become infatuated with the attending doctor, ignorant of his concealed homosexuality. The doctor, despite his other sexual tendencies, takes them to bed, one after the other, deceiving them with the promise of a probable union. When visiting hours end, the libertine and mischievous young man survives by selling corpses for organ trafficking, helped by the promiscuous nurses. One day, the young Tawan (one of the nurses) discovers that all her friends have had relations with the doctor and falls into a fit of jealousy, especially because she dreamed of marrying the smiling lad. Needless to say, the others pin her to the bed and kill her, then give the corpse to the much-desired doctor who sells it for organ trafficking. Happily ever after? No.
Rumor has it, indeed, that seven days after her death, the spirit of a corpse returns to the loved ones. And after seven days, at the stroke of midnight, the sweet maidens are torn apart one by one, in an unparalleled gore carousel, by the (extremely sensual… I challenge you to find a sexier and more playful ghost than this one) vengeful spirit...
On paper, it seems almost like the usual Asian ghost story, yet the genius of the two directors is felt from the first shot: "Sick Nurses" is a film that thrives on moments, with a solid and delirious screenplay and great imagination. The beginning already proves to be surprising: for once the opening credits contain the true essence of the film, and they do so with an unhealthy awareness, managing to even unsettle...
Unintentionally, of course.
Because "Sick Nurses" doesn't aim to scare, but to entertain. And don't expect a parody, because "Sick Nurses" is anything but another "Scary Movie", quite the opposite...
It's a continuous, relentless, race towards the grotesque, caressing it or plunging into it, ending in the most destructive surrealism. The genius of those who can invent, succeeding simultaneously in mocking all that has been invented. The genius of those who do not demonstrate, but show: managing to be unhealthy and fantastic thanks also to beautiful shots, an acidic photography that grasps the skin, and a combination of decent actresses, always a little ditzy, to be clear, but who know their stuff.
A continuous carousel of amusements, mutilations, love, poetry, trash, beauty, horror, ugliness, intelligence, and stupidity. A game of opposites that blend in the highly successful, devastating finale: the film ends with a cleaver right where it ought to have ended, suddenly. If the film had been realized in Hollywood, they probably would have made it finish twenty minutes after that sequence. But no. There are those who still have the gift of synthesis and know how to exploit it, managing to create a film that only seems stupid at first glance, but is incredibly captivating.
Incredible, then, the extremely bloody deaths, perhaps the most entertaining and ingenious in an entire splatter cinema: unforgettable the girl who, after being forced to swallow a bunch of blades, loses her jaw and tongue, which a cat devours. No time to cry in despair as a formalin fetus gets lodged in her throat, suffocating her. All with blood splattering across the room. And what about the girl who finds herself with her phone embedded under her cheek, lighting up every time someone calls? Or the nurse who has a bag stitched onto her head?
To be retrieved and thrown into this damn Italy.
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