Film Review: Nocebo has all the elements of an ancient folktale

Nocebo is like a cautionary fable gradually building tension until it explodes into fiery retribution.

★★★★☆

Christine’s husband, Felix (Mark Strong), and her headstrong daughter, Bobs (Billie Gadsdon), resent Diana’s unannounced presence, but soon Diana uses herbal remedies and ancient Filipino healing rites to cure Christine’s ailments and rejuvenate her stalled career. It all seems a little too good to be true, not least because Nocebo is a Lorcan Finnegan film — in tandem with screenwriting collaborator Garret Shanley, Finnegan, who previously helmed Vivarium and Without Name, delights in setting up apparently realistic scenarios before introducing paranormal elements.

Nocebo starring Eva Green, Mark Strong and Chai Fonacier.

The big twist revealing the film’s true horror is heavily foreshadowed, but that’s not the point of Nocebo: here Finnegan and Shanley are more interested in how everyday emotions — guilt, especially — can become monsters colonising the mind (“What’s not in the mind?” enquires Diana innocently at one point).

Green is terrific as a brilliant woman coming unhinged, no longer able to trust her own body and instincts,with strong support from Mark Strong, with Fonacier deliciously sinister as the ostensibly sweet-natured Diana.

Strip away the contemporary setting and Nocebo has all the elements of an ancient folktale, a cautionary fable gradually
building tension until it explodes into fiery retribution.

(cinema release)