Nervous (2026) by Abner Pastoll

Director: Abner Pastoll

Year: 2026

Country: South Korea/United Kingdom

Alternate Titles: N/A

Genre: Psychological

Plot:

After moving to a new house, a woman is slowly convinced that a special condition has befallen her that makes her unable to hear men’s voices but can hear everyone else, leading her to find out the cause of the situation and figure out how to stop it from consuming her physical self.

Review:

Overall, this was a really strong and worthwhile genre effort. Among the better factors with this one is the engrossing central setup that manages to offer up the kind of sympathetic turn that goes on here as she slowly starts to succumb to this bizarre experience. The whole idea of giving us an in-depth look at the relationship of the couple, who are painted as the kind of controlling, domineering type, with the husband and his wife’s meek, mild behavior being constantly overwritten and ignored so that he can take the lead in the situation where she becomes constantly frustrated at what’s happening to her. There’s a lot of fun to be had here with these interactions, as it slowly gets to the point where the eventual encounter with the gramophone that causes her to slowly lose her hearing makes for a generally intriguing time when the film starts to explore this theme over time.

Moreover, it connects to the fact that she can only hear women, as she’s perfectly fine around her female neighbor or anything else that is female-coded. This type of implicit lesbian intuition that comes about with her trying to help the woman understand her situation and try to figure out how to operate in life when the men turn into indecipherable buzzing noises and eventually start to succumb to torturous physical pain that starts to turn her into a writhing bit of ear torture emerges with the incessantly bleeding ears and insufferable piercing screams in her ear that render it hard to operate as normal. This comes about rather well as it goes along, especially with the growing reveals that are made as they try to help each other with the strange condition that works well enough to offset the one lone issue in the subplot about the other bodies showing up around the village who are tied to women’s disappearances that doesn’t need to be there and prolonging the running time for no reason.

Overview: ****/5

An immensely solid and likable genre effort, there’s a lot to like here with an intriguing tale and some impressive elements at play that offset the lone issue here that manages to keep this down just slightly. Those with an interest in the style or approach here will have the most to like here, while most others out there should heed mild caution.