There are two scenes integral to understanding to the type of horror conveyed in Nocebo (Lorcan Finnegan, 2022). First, is when newly hired nanny – though a better term would be domestic helper, Diana (Chai Fonacier) brings breakfast in bed to her employers, husband and wife Felix (Mark Strong) and Christine (Eva Green). Both were surprised as they were still asleep. As part of her scheme to study the house, Diana tries to create small talk, but instead she’s called ‘intrusive.’ Second, is much later in the film when Felix starts to get bothered about how Diana appears to deeply influence Christine’s behavior as she has since then functioned as both doctor and therapist to her, through folk medicine in order remedy her mysterious illness. Felix goes into the Diana’s quarters late at night to confront her. Expressing her discomfort, and noting he is drunk, Felix declares that he can do whatever he wants since ‘this is my house.’
For a film that has no short supply of horror, both psychological and visceral, shown directly or through tension between characters, I find the aforementioned scenes the most dreadful precisely because both are realistic, not to mention common, scenarios in regards to live-in care work involving migrants, often female and coming from labor-exporting countries like the Philippines. On an economical sense, the set-up saves the domestic helper on living costs on the host country (in this case, Ireland), but as the same time it is conducive to labor violations like blurring of work hours or outright abuse. You are expected to work and live in a space never truly yours, and where you never totally take a break. Aside from the more obvious class and gender dimensions, this politics of space as a theme extends masterfully throughout Nocebo. To echo Slavoj Zizek, a good illustration in finding out what a horror movie is truly about is seeing what is left when you disregard the horror or fantastic elements.
One day, out of nowhere Diana arrives at Christine’s posh home claiming to the house help she asked for, from a recruitment agency presumably (though this procedure or option is obscured in the film’s narrative). Christine is a fashion designer, taking time off and appearing to be distraught after a fiasco at work, goes with it. The bewildered Felix, later gives in, and explains that his disoriented wife could use an extra pair of hands. When asked about his wife’s condition, he explains that she’s suffering from guilt. Diana immediately tries to win over the still uneasy family’s affection through her cooking. They admit unfamiliarity to Filipino cuisine but nonetheless appreciate it, while Felix talks about its ‘potential.’ Diana then strategically presents herself to be able to help Christine relieve her of stress through faith healing or folk medicine. The two lead women then play a game of domestic cat and mouse of who truly has the power over the other. I don’t think I have anything more to add to the discussion about the portrayal of the said rituals, especially since it doesn’t depart very far from the depiction in Holy Emy (Araceli Lemos, 2021).
Lemos’ debut film, not as publicized beyond film festival circuits, is a meditative story of Filipino migrant sisters living and working in Greece. It uses visually compelling faith healing procedures, such as extraction of objects though massages, to reflect on life and death. Nocebo is more deliberate and bold, pushing further the alarming visuals, such as in showing a black chick leaving or entering someone’s mouth to show transfer of abilities or power. Even I only read about this in Ricky Lee novel’ Si Amapola sa 65 na Kabanata (2011), but haven’t seen it in any Filipino horror films, which frequently tackles such rituals in a very sanitized manner. In such films, the figure of the Other is often being pinned on the rural folk as a default.
In both Nocebo and Holy Emy, the material roots, or the reason for persistence, of these folk practices in the present is ignored. In a recent study on health expenditure in the Philippines, people still resort to these alternative or traditional medicine practices because of the inaccessibility, or even the total lack, of public health infrastructure. Other ‘catastrophic’ steps explored by the researchers involve people begging politicians for financial aid (thereby reproducing patronage ties) and falling prey to loan sharks in times of medical emergencies. This presence of barely functional social safety nets is in fact also a driving force behind labor migration of Filipinos, personified in the occupation of Diana. What emerges is a global care deficit – one leaves to care for others, in order to care for one’s own.
As the film goes on, we further see these symptoms of underdevelopment in Diana’s flash backs. She flees the rural community where she resides as it is terrorized by paramilitary groups to usher in mining operations that are almost always foreign corporations. She and her partner find themselves living in a slum community in Manila, while she works in a sweatshop that manufactures garments. We see a lead hand ruthless to the women employees he manages, but bows down to a female foreign client, revealed to be Christine, once she demands an unrealistic production quota. An unmistakable delineation of unequal flow of bodies, goods, and capital through national borders, with clear winners and losers. Eventually Diana notices a work room in the large house and appears to be long inactive. She asks Christine if she also makes clothes, and she replies ‘I only design them’. It was quite predictable, but also so fitting that this is where the final confrontation between the two will happen. While there’s extra space in Christine’s home for her craft, Diana brings her own child to her crowded and poorly ventilated workplace.
Nocebo caused a stir online as soon as its trailer came out, with discussions especially zeroed on Fonacier’s accent as a marker of her othering. I feel that this turned out to figure very little in the film, as it took painstaking care to establish the social roots of Diana’s motivations. People might focus on the actress getting a break in an international film, but it is an Irish-Filipino co-production after all. The rituals however are exoticized to be sinister and Christine having a nightmares about a giant tick is a bit on the nose, though these might seen as a compromise to the genre’s formal demands. Interestingly, a feat that the film accomplishes is adding a transnational dimension to Rain Rain Go Away (Chris Martinez, 2011), a episode in the Shake Rattle and Roll horror franchise inspired by the massive flooding caused by Typhoon Ondoy in 2009. The episode is about an affluent family being haunted by child laborers who didn’t survive the storm. I think very few people recognized the boldness of its critique and how well the plot and genre worked together to delivered it when it came out. An exception is Rolando Tolentino, in his review, later expanded into a journal article, arguing that in the unequal experience of calamities and its aftermath, horror serves as a wish fulfillment – where the underdogs actually have a chance to fight back and win a pyrric victory.
For contrast, a another film that comes to mind is The Maid (Kelvin Tong, 2005), where a Filipina domestic helper goes to Singapore for work, but soon tries to uncover the reason behind the disappearance of her employer’s former maid. Here, closure is conflated with returning home, and by extension, justice. After watching Nocebo, this feels like a cop out. The emotional turmoil that Christine suffers from isn’t going to redeem her from actual lives lost. Folk horror is commonly framed as when pre-modern forces intrude contemporary rational lives. Nocebo on the other hand, asserts that even this paradigm is a facade. What happens is that the modernity in the centers feed and is sustained by barbarity in the peripheries.
Towards the end of the closing credits, ‘JUSTICE FOR ALL KENTEX WORKERS’ appears while the tribute song Pugon by The General Strike plays. Unfortunately, a translation or context is not provided. Kentex is a manufacturer of flip flops in Valenzuela City, where a fire broke out in 2015 killing seventy two people. It is one of the worse fire incident in the country’s history, and is largely blamed on the poor working conditions in the site, included iron barred windows. The chorus goes, ‘Nagliyab itong kahon / kinulong at binaon / naabo sila doon / sa pabrikang naging pugon’ which loosely translates to, ‘This box was ablaze / imprisoned and buried / people were turned into ashes / there in the factory that turned into furnace.’ In 2020, after a long legal battle, company and local fire officials were found not guilty on the charges of reckless imprudence resulting into multiple homicides and injuries. Nocebo, even with all its flaws, is still a significant attempt to depict the horrors of global supply chains, and the quest for justice. Beyond representation, the film also provokes several other questions. How can stories mobilize others in the face of injustice? How to build solidarity ties in a international level? Urgent questions that should be answered not just in regards to cinema alone.
Jacob Laneria 