Sick Nurses: Its Insanity Knows No Bounds

Going into Sick Nurses, a 2007 Thai horror film, I wasn't expecting a cinematic masterpiece. I wasn't even expecting something too terribly creative. As long as it was at least moderately entertaining, and as long as there was at least a little bit of fake blood splashed across the screen, I would've been happy. In the end, Sick Nurses exceeded my expectations, not because it was a brilliant piece of storytelling, but because it is one of the most bizarre, nonsensical, and entertaining things I have ever experienced.

The wondrous journey that Sick Nurses takes you on is a little slow to start. The beginning of the movie moves about as slowly as an earthworm crawling through pancake syrup. Honestly, the beginning is about as cliche Asian horror story as you get. A gaggle of young, attractive nurses, working under a young, corrupt doctor, murder one of their own. The reason? Well, it appears that this nurse threatened to go to the police regarding the hospital's side operation- selling dead bodies on the black market.

The nurses go about their vapid lives until, seven days after the killing, the spirit of the fallen nurse comes to back to take bloody vengeance on her murderers. As I said, up until this point its pretty bland. Even the dead nurse's look is generic Asian horror- complete with the standard long hair masking half her face.

It isn't until a good chunk of the movie that's things get bizarre, and consequently, really fun. You see, all of these nurses have major flaws (one is a greedy material girl, a set of identical twins are so in love with their own looks that they have a borderline incestuous relationship...you get the picture). In a surprisingly clever Saw-esque twist, the nurses' respective flaws are brought back to haunt them by the vengeful spirit. It is here that Sick Nurses shines- the nurses' deaths are bloody, creative, and shockingly funny. I wouldn't dare to spoil what is one of the most outlandish deaths in film history, but I will give you a small taste of what to expect- it features a severed jaw and fetus spontaneously leaping out of a jar. How can people say originality is dead?!

As you might have guessed by now, the mayhem of Sick Nurses is played more for laughs than scares. This is a movie that, if they have the patience to sit through the mediocre beginning, will be enjoyable to fans of the blood-soaked splatter comedies of Japan (The Machine Girl, Tokyo Gore Police, etc.) While Sick Nurses is nowhere near as frantic as those movies, it shares the same gloriously perverse sense of humor, and in-your-face special effects.

Lastly, if you stick around 'til the end you will be rewarded with a weird, weird, weird twist ending. Despite (or because of?) the fact that this twist is completely unnecessary, it makes Sick Nurses all that more enjoyable, hilarious, and awesome.