Film Review: Nocebo by Lorcan Finnegan

There are two scenes integral to understanding the type of horror conveyed in Lorcan Finnegan’s Nocebo (Philippines / Ireland, 2022). The first is when the newly hired domestic helper Diana (Chai Fonacier) brings breakfast in bed to her employers, Felix (Mark Strong) and Christine (Eva Green). Both were surprised, as they had been asleep. As she observes the bedroom, Diana tries to create small talk, but instead she’s called “intrusive.” The second is when Felix becomes bothered by Diana’s influence upon his wife Christine. At this point, Diana had taken on the roles of doctor and therapist, using folk medicine to remedy Christine’s mysterious illness. Felix goes into the Diana’s quarters late at night to confront her. When Diana expresses her discomfort and points out his intoxicated condition, 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, I find these scenes the most dreadful precisely because both are all too common scenarios involving migrant live-in care workers, often women coming from labor-exporting countries like the Philippines. Economically, the domestic helper saves on living costs in the host country (in this case, Ireland), but at 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 breaks can never actually be taken. Intersecting with class and gender dimensions, this politics of space 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.

Diana arrives one day at Christine’s posh home claiming to the house help requested, from a recruitment agency presumably. Christine, a fashion designer currently taking time off after a distressing fiasco at work, goes with it. The bewildered Felix eventually gives in, reasoning that his disoriented wife could use an extra pair of hands. When asked about his wife’s condition, he explains that she is suffering from guilt. Diana 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 as capable of relieving Christine of stress through faith healing and folk medicine. The two lead women then play a game of domestic cat and mouse over who truly has more power over the other.

These scenes of folk spirituality are reminiscent of Araceli Lemos’ debut film Holy Emy (Greece / France, 2021). The film, not so publicized beyond film festival circuits, is a meditative story of Filipino migrant sisters living and working in Greece, and draws upon visually compelling faith healing procedures, such as extraction of objects though massages, to reflect on life and death. Nocebo is bolderin pushing the alarming visuals, such as in showing a black chick leaving or entering someone’s mouth to show transfer of abilities or power. I had only ever read about this ritual in Ricky Lee novel’ Si Amapola sa 65 na Kabanata (2011), but haven’t seen it in any Filipino horror films, which tends to sanitize such rituals. Nevertheless, this horror trope ends up figuring the rural folk as the Other.

In both Nocebo and Holy Emy, the material reasons for the persistence of these folk practices in the present is ignored. In a recent study on health expenditure in the Philippines, researchers found that people may resort to these alternative medicinal 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 a driving force behind labor migration of Filipinos, exemplified in Diana’s occupation. What emerges is a global care deficit—one leaves to care for others, in order to care for one’s own family.       

As the film goes on, we see further symptoms of underdevelopment in Diana’s flashbacks. She flees her rural community, as it is terrorized by paramilitary groups ushering in mining operations by 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 who is ruthless to his women employees, but deferential to a female foreign client, later revealed to be Christine, demanding an unrealistic production quota. Revealed is an unmistakable delineation of unequal flow of bodies, goods, and capital through national borders, with clear winners and losers. Diana asks Christine if she also makes clothes, who replies ‘I only design them.’ It was quite predictable, but also fitting that this is the setting for the final confrontation between these two.

Folk horror is commonly framed as the intrusion of pre-modern forces upon a contemporary, rationalized, and typically Western sphere. Nocebo reveals the façade of this paradigm: the modernity of the global centers feeds upon and is sustained by “barbarity” in the peripheries. Towards the end of the film’s closing credits, “JUSTICE FOR ALL KENTEX WORKERS” appears while the tribute song “Pugon” by The General Strike plays. Unfortunately, neither translation nor context is provided for the English-language viewer. 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 worst fire incidents in the country’s history and is largely blamed on the poor working conditions of the site, such as its iron barred windows. The chorus sings, “Nagliyab itong kahon / kinulong at binaon / naabo sila doon / sa pabrikang naging pugon” (“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 of charges of reckless imprudence resulting into multiple homicides and injuries. Nocebo is a significant attempt to depict the horrors of global supply chains and the quest for justice.


Eric Abalajon is currently a lecturer at the UP Visayas, Iloilo. His works have appeared in Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, The Tiger Moth Review, ANMLY, Modern Poetry in Translation, and Footprints: An Anthology of New Ecopoetry (Broken Sleep Books, 2022). He lives near Iloilo City.

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