Sick Nurses

Co-directed by Piraphan Laoyont, making his feature film debut, and Thodsapol Siriwiwat, who he worked with on Suicide Me, Sick Nurses comes from the same Prachya Pinkaew-headed stable that was responsible for Ong-Bak, Chocolate and, most recently, 13: Game of Death. As far as I can make out it is their first foray into horror.
 
Sick Nurses is one of those 'vengeful spirit' movies and revolves around a group of nurses and a doctor who purposely kill patients to harvest their organs. Two of the nurses are sisters and are both in love with the doctor.  When one threatens to blow the lid on the whole operation, she is killed by the rest of the nurses.
 
Of course there's a bit of spiritual mumbo-jumbo which says that the spirit returns after seven days to the person they loved the most.  In this case however, the spirit makes an exception and goes after the nurses that killed her.  The malevolent spectre is almost entirely black and is very p***ed off, killing in very nasty and innovative ways as the story jumps in time to show how she died and something dark in the doctor's past that also returns to haunt him.

 
Far from original, Sick Nurses takes plot devices from Ringu, Ju-on: The Grudge and even Gozu in a veritable Asian reference-fest. I was never sure whether it was supposed to be straight horror or a satire on the genre that spawned it - I found it amusing when the spirit encased a nurse's head in a handbag, but didn't know if this humour was intentional. It doesn't help that the inexperienced directors have surrounded themselves with inexperienced actors, about half making their film debuts here - their acting is unsurprisingly amateurish.  Compounding this, the narrative doesn't make a whole lot of sense and the inclusion of the 'doctor of the year' ceremony (with a Carrie reference) made me think that this was just a way of shoe-horning in as many citations as possible with coherency as a secondary thought.  In addition, the nurses all seem to live in the almost abandoned hospital which, to me, heavily resembles the building from Garth Marenghi's Darkplace!
 
I was just left cold by this as it wasn't funny enough to be a horror-comedy, nor scary enough to be a straight horror.  There's none of the dread or overwhelming atmosphere that the best Asian horrors have - A Tale of Two Sisters this is not.
 

The Disc

 
Extra Features
All you get is a ten minute Behind the Scenes featurettes which is entirely B-roll footage without any contextualisation, though it shows the amount of CGI and green-screen work that was employed, there is also the Trailer.
 
The Picture
Generally very good, with excellent colours and definition but some of the CGI is dreadful and some of the wider shots are a little noisy. I've never been in a Thai hospital but I can only imagine that the 'sexy nurses' costumes are entirely fictitious as they're certainly not practical!
 
The Sound
A clear Dolby Digital 5.1 surround track with well written and legible subtitles - there is no English dub, but that's not a bad thing as I'm generally averse to dub tracks. The choice of music is eclectic to say the least and the score fails to raise the tension.
 
Final Thoughts
I would have enjoyed this much more if I'd known what it wanted to be; it appears to be a straight horror movie but the deaths are occasionally funny and the characterisation is sadly lacking. I had no idea what the nurses were called and so didn't really care, failing to engage with them on any level or even if I was supposed to. There are much better Thai horror films available but, unlike them, I can't see a Hollywood remake on the horizon for Sick Nurses.