Nocebo

We live in a troubled society, with rates of anxiety, depression and other mental disorders skyrocketing. Often the causes are pretty easy to pinpoint, if not easy to treat. Fatigue due to overwork, stress due to poverty, loneliness due to the Covid pandemic and despair at the state of our planet are all big contributors. There’s one thing which people are much more hesitant to discuss, however, despite it having a measurable psychiatric impact with a familiar set of symptoms, and that’s guilt.

Should Christine (Eva Green) feel guilty? Aside from being overwrought, she seems like a fairly nice person. She’s obviously wealthy, living in a large, spacious house, and she’s self-centred and forgetful, but she never seems malicious or cruel. Guilt doesn’t just stem from negative intentions, however. The things we do without thinking about them can be just as damaging, and even a dim awareness of such things, pushed to the margins of the mind, can eat away at the soul.

Christine’s illness first manifests when she’s working at a fashion show. Stumbling out of the main event, she has an encounter with a strange, flea-ridden dog which may be a hallucination or something supernatural – viewers familiar with international horror tropes may make particular connections to the latter. An insect shaken loose from the dog appears to bit her, and thereafter her health begins a steady period of deterioration. When Filipina home help Diana (Chai Fonacier) arrives at her home she can’t remember hiring her, but she’s nonetheless aware that she needs assistance. Along with making herself useful in the home in general, Diana begins to treat her with folk medicine. Husband Felix (Mark Strong) immediately objects, concerned that her vulnerability is being exploited, but with cracks already evident in their relationship and Christine increasingly desperate, it’s not Diana who gets pushed away.

Whilst viewers may be concerned that there’s some monstering of a cultural outside going on here, the film is cleverer than that. As its title suggests, the real damage is done within Christine’s own mind – she suffers because she expects to. Green has a history of playing edgy, difficult characters, but never before has she done so without a touch of glamour, and Christine’s physical decline makes quite an impression. Falling into a spiral of obsession, she has less and less energy for the worried Felix, and for their daughter, Bobs (Billie Gadsdon), who finds solace in keeping company with Diana.

Although none of the actors really seems to give as much as they’re capable of in a production which sometimes opts for style over substance, there’s a strong core idea here complemented by a distinctive visual aesthetic. Everything about the production is competent and if it sometimes lacks punch, that may in part reflect its interest in unexamined lives. It makes its point clearly and evocatively, and joins a growing body of work which draws upon supernatural horror tropes to address the horror of specific forms of injustice in today’s world.