November 26, 2022
Christine (Eva Green) was a famous designer of children's clothing. During one fashion show, a mysterious dog covered with ticks appeared before Christine. When the dog shook, one of its ticks landed on her nape. Since then, Christine began suffering from episodes of nervousness and shaking that negatively affected her ability to work, and her relationship with her husband Felix (Mark Strong) and daughter Roberta (Billie Gadsdon).
One day, a Filipino woman named Diana (Chai Fonacier) appeared at Christine's door offering her housekeeping services. Despite having no memory at all of hiring anyone, Christine welcomed Diana in to work for them, something Felix and Roberta did not like. Aside from cooking good food, Diana also knew how folk medicinal techniques which actually improved the unusual symptoms Christine had been experiencing all this time.
A nocebo is the opposite of a placebo. A nocebo is supposed to be a neutral substance that gives a worsening effect to how a patient feels because he thought very negatively of it. I am not entirely sure there was a nocebo at work in this story because Christine actually trusted Diana's rituals and she apparently recovered because of them, and this was despite the negative opinions of her husband and daughter.
The production went over-the-top with the voodoo, but totally sold it because of Chai Fonacier's eerie portrayal of Diana's insidious manipulation with that unnerving Visayan accent. As she did in her previous roles, Eva Green can really push complex eccentric characters like Christine to their breaking point. The reliable Mark Strong lends his support as the skeptical husband Felix, who kept getting in the way of Diana's plans.
The film took us back to the reason of how and why Diana specifically went to work at Christine's house, and this exposed some unfortunate socio-economic realities. One wonders though if this film did any favors at all to the reputation of Filipino housekeepers and nannies working all over the world right now by showing what otherworldly things Diana was capable of doing. However, as a psychological horror film, this actually worked very well. 7/10.
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