Nocebo, Review: Eva Green finally gets a role that’s obsessive enough to do her justice

Featuring a bizarre and wonderfully surreal thriller noceboThe image of the “bad nanny” turned upside down.

First of all, we are asked if the victim of the Pretty White Lady horror film convention is such a victim at all. With Eva Green as Christina, a fashion designer suffering from a disturbing psychosomatic illness, and Mark Strong as Felix, her high-profile businessman, the film revolves around the family’s work—wealthy, sedate, and for the most part too self-indulgent. a sometimes headstrong little kid (Billy Gadsdon) – and her new nanny.

When Diana (Filipino pop star Chai Fonacier, reserved and subtle) shows up, a strange, betrayal intimacy seems to develop between the two women. All this is filmed with cold precision and a slightly ironic tone.

Seeing the often underestimated Eva Green as the agitated, dream-driven Christine in a tough lead role is a real joy: with her silky, raven-black charm, the actress has always had a bleakness that makes her apt for genre material. but often the quality of their previous solutions does not match their potential.

Cristina relies heavily – too heavily – on her enigmatic nanny who believes in old-fashioned Filipino folk magic and offers her employer all-natural remedies that seem to be getting more and more effective. As the story progresses, the true motivation behind Diana’s arrival at the family home becomes clear – a surprising and rather political tale of personal revenge combined with a deeply anti-capitalist stance.

Writer Garrett Shanley attacks the moral exhaustion of the progressive upper middle class and confronts the organic forces of the Diana case for mystical artifacts. There’s a clever nod to the silliness of this horror-movie fascination with folk magic somewhere.

nocebo is the third feature film from writer-director Lorcan Finnegan, whose terrific 2019 sci-fi film was made vivarium found a source of incalculable horror even in an ordinary household. Here noceboWe’ve also expanded on a relatively familiar genre-set – immigrant housewives and wealthy families in an unpredictable microcosm of class hierarchy – to make a dramatic socio-political statement.

While all of this is irrelevant – as is often the case with ambitiously edited horror (the latest revelations tend to be a bit exaggerated), where it leads is admirable, complete with a final title screen detailing actual industrial exploitation. describes Filipino workers.

It’s a decent twisted little thriller with some very clever ideas.