With the Asian horror craze of the early to mid 2000s, I never really got into it as much as some folks. Sure, The Ring was a fun ride, but after that came The Grudge, One Missed Call, Pulse and so on. Don’t get me wrong, they were good, but the fact that Hollywood remade perfectly good films for an American audience, and in most cases watered them down, it got old fast. So why am I bringing that up in regards to James Cullen Bressack’s Pernicious? While certainly not a remake, Bressack’s film takes the Asian ghost story trope, and throws in a bit of torture porn and other gory moments. You can’t blame ’em for trying.
A trio of young women — Alex (Ciarra Hanna), her sister Rachel (Jackie Moore) and their friend, Julia (Emily O’Brien) — arrive in Bangkok, Thailand to teach schoolchildren English. Upon arriving at their new suburban accommodations, the women discover a life-sized gold statue of a girl draped in a bloody sheet in an upstairs room. Unbeknownst to them, the statue holds the soul of a Kumari, a young girl who is the manifestation of divine female energy or “living goddess”. And after a hard night of clubbing, the three friends wake up to discover that the statue has gone missing. Weird things begin to happen around the women. Turns out that the Kumari is the jealous type, and demands attention in the worst way possible.
Belying its indie origins, Pernicious looks quite impressive. Shot in Bangkok and Ayutthaya, the locales are definitely an enjoyable aspect of the film. Bressack smartly shows off the lush landscape around the house in his shots, as well as a few shots that firmly establish the Thai setting. It definitely gives the impression that this isn’t a film shot on the cheap, and really sells the “stranger in a strange land” aspect that definitely wouldn’t have been as effective had it been shot in some US city.
Another plus is the film’s reliance on practical effects. There are a few CGI shots here, but thankfully they’re kept subtle. The rest of the time, it’s in-camera stuff. And for those looking for the red stuff, the film delivers. As mentioned, there are a couple of sequences that are definite torture porn candidates. A guy’s gouged-out eyeball, him being fed the eyeball, fingernails being ripped off, tongues and teeth being ripped out and more. It’s all done in that style, and the fact that it’s all practical and believably executed results in some pretty squeamish moments.
However, that all becomes moot when you get beyond Pernicious‘ appearance. For starters, our leads are very much interchangeable. There are no real defining character traits that differentiate the women from one another, other than the stereotypical horror tropes. They also do some questionable things, such as instead of worrying about the possibility that they were roofied early on in the first act, they instead immediately turn their attention to the missing statue and the house being ransacked. And if you haven’t already guessed, all three leads are your typical “beach bodies”, who spend a lot of time around the house in skimpy clothes.
The problems get worse. I said that the film looked gorgeous, right? Digging deeper, that exterior hides the issue of pacing. Not only does the aforementioned torture sequence come out of nowhere and is seemingly shoehorned into first act, the rest of the film’s momentum afterwards feels like a stalled car starting and stopping. This is especially apparent when it comes time to dole out exposition. Not only that, but Pernicious lifts a lot of scenes and jump scares from other films, such as a bathroom mirror gag from Mirrors, and the ghostly Asian girl hiding under a character’s bedsheets a la The Grudge. It really does turn into a paint-by-numbers plot you’ve seen in other Asian ghost story films, and aren’t nearly as well executed.
The film’s title should have been a clue. Not only is the word ‘pernicious’ esoteric to many people today (I didn’t miss the irony of using ‘esoteric’, since that’s esoteric in itself), but it also comes off a bit pretentious and superficial. And really, that’s what Pernicious the film feels like. Beyond the external beauty of the leads and the Thai backdrop, the film fails when you discover the lackluster character development, inconsistent pacing and derivative story elements. See it out of curiosity, but don’t be surprised if the film quickly bores you with things you’ve seen before, and done much better.