It’s almost an obligation of modern horror movies to cut in a drone shot of a car moving along a lonely rural road early on to establish genre expectations – though we’re later told that the seemingly lonely, sort-of-dilapidated, unfurnished thanks to an unreliable delivery driver home is on the edge of Seoul.
Sungsoo (Sungsoo Yune), a Korean actor, is bringing his Irish wife Sarah (Sarah Bolger) to the house, which is a surprise gift from ‘an Aunt in Australia’ who hates her. Sungsoo presents this as a treat, teasing Sarah by blindfolding her on the trip – a bit of misdirection, since this film is about the ears not the eyes – and has, not for the first or last time, grossly misjudged the situation. ‘I fucking hate surprises’ Sarah tells him – she’s lost a job as an investigative journalist because she became obsessive about his probable infidelity and spent more time spying on him than tracking down stories … and has now relocated across the world, doing her best to immerse herself in a new culture. Though most Koreans assume she can’t speak the language, she’s learning … she can understand what’s being said but can’t always frame the words to contribute to the conversation.
The house, which gives off Grudge vibes, comes complete with a weird squatting woman in an orange mackintosh who might be one of a list of women who’ve gone missing after the murder of a man in their lives. Sungsoo escorts the woman off the premises but then fetches down an antique wind-up gramophone from an attic and plays a record which only seems blank – there’s crackle and hiss and perhaps a sound only Sarah (or maybe only a woman) can hear. Drop-dead-gorgeous neighbour Eunbyeol (Ko Ah-sung) at first excites Sarah’s incipient jealousy by chatting with Sungsoo, but then becomes a fixture – or possibly a fantasty ingredient – in Sarah’s own life, encouraging her to indulge in passions for food, drink, dancing and snogging in an outdoor bath. Then Sarah begins to have problems – bleeding from her ears, tuning out certain frequencies, specifically being unable to hear male voices while women’s remain pin-sharp.
Director Abner Pastoll (A Good Woman is Hard to Find), who also co-wrote with Richard Hobley, works with sound designer Nick Baldock to give Nervous an impressive aural landscape. On one level, the film is about the common phenomenon of ‘airplane ear’ – a temporary but maddening condition which comes and goes seemingly at random – and Bolger does a remarkable job of conveying how a simple irritant can become mind-wrecking. In a key sequence, involving Dan Martin effects, Sarah does all the little things – shaking, poking, probing and tugging her ears – sufferers can’t avoid only to escalate into gorier attempted treatments which venture deep into body horror territory. Even a teasing, clever party sequence where Sarah is only able to hear half the conversation – and is perhaps imagining some of it – while Sungsoo’s friends unhelpfully make light of things is acutely observed and thematically relevant. That Sixth Sense tell of the character who’s probably not really there because no one talks or listens to them is deployed in a culture (and a marriage) where women are made to feel that way all the time whether they’re living or dead.
The ghost/serial killer side of things is signposted early on, which makes this a film on a journey to an inevitable end rather than one of twists and turns – the protagonist who fucking hates surprises wouldn’t be unhappy with this. Bolger, star of A Good Woman is Hard to Find, is again extraordinary, but in a different register … a general point observable in quite a few FrightFest selections (and recent horror in general) is that horror films afford female actors opportunities which mainstream cinema too seldom grants.