2 Movies Like Nocebo (2022)

Staff & contributors

Chasing the feel of watching Nocebo ? Here are the movies we recommend you watch right after.

Irish director Lorcan Finnegan's follow-up to the social dystopia Vivarium, too, centers around the trials and tribulations of a nuclear family. Overwhelmed by work and struck by an inexplicable disease, Christine (played by Eva Green) seems to have forgotten she employed a caretaker for her daughter Bobs. The plot thickens when a Filipino woman named Diana rings the door bell: what kind of mother forgets something like that? What follows is as nightmarish as it sounds, the film's visual potency summoning one's deepest fears and anxieties about reality slipping away. Green and Chai Fonacier (Diana) play an exquisite game of cat and mouse, but even the psychological thrill of that chase is not significant enough to overthrow the dubious racial politics at play. By the end, Nocebo makes an effort to position itself on the right side of history, but the power of its political critique wanes and wanes.

As the first original Filipino film on Prime Video, Ten Little Mistresses can often feel stuck as an entertaining pitch for a film rather than a fully fleshed out story. Like many mystery-comedies, this is a movie that relies on its star power and its big twists over any convincing narrative or thematic ideas. But oddly enough, the sooner you accept this, the easier the film goes down. As a loud and proud example of camp comedy, even its most ridiculous and incongruous elements feel like an authentic expression of Filipino humor; it never tries to pander to a Western audience that might be expecting something more familiar to their sensibilities. And with a cast this dedicated to out-chewing the scenery from each other, it's hard not to get swept up in the insanity of it all.

Genre: Comedy, Mystery

Actor: Adrianna So, Agot Isidro, Angie Castrence, Arci Muñoz, Carmi Martin, Cherry Pie Picache, Christian Bables, Dolly Dulu, Donna Cariaga, Eugene Domingo, Iana Bernardez, John Arcilla, Kate Alejandrino, Kris Bernal, Pokwang, Sharlene San Pedro

Director: Jun Robles Lana

At one point in The Whale, Brendan Fraser’s Charlie —  a morbidly obese, reclusive teacher — describes an act of abject cruelty as “not evil” but “honesty.” Darren Aronofsky seems to believe the same about his movie, but alas, he's gravely misled, because The Whale is flooringly glib. From the outset, the film actively and incessantly tries to choreograph audience disgust for Charlie, all so that it can pull off a manipulative “he’s human, actually” swing later on — a “twist” that won’t work if you, you know, already accept people’s humanity irrespective of their appearance. 

Cinematography, makeup, and score all conspire to paint Charlie as grotesque: the camera laboriously over-emphasizes his size and mobility issues, while histrionic music chimes in to frame trivial moments (like Charlie reaching to pick something up from the floor) as grand, tragic dramas. Even if you ignore all its needless cruelty, The Whale — which is adapted from a play — can never shed its stagy origins: the writing frequently reaches for transcendence, but its efforts are as subtle as its evidently retroactively-shoehorned-in-title. If it’s as sincere as it purports to be, this is one of the worst movies of recent years, and if it’s not — which is almost preferable — then it’s a landmark exercise in trolling.

Genre: Drama

Actor: Allison Altman, Brendan Fraser, Hong Chau, Jacey Sink, Lance Oppenheim, Sadie Sink, Samantha Morton, Sathya Sridharan, Ty Simpkins, Wilhelm Schalaudek

Director: Darren Aronofsky