I’m actually quite disappointed in the wasted potential of director Yam Laranas’ latest film ‘Nightshift,’ which is brimming with promise but jolted out of any sense of profundity by insisting on being scary. It has a solid premise, a good cast, a narrative setup rife with interesting possibilities, and a director who is amazing at mood (‘Aurora’), visual imagery (‘Sigaw/The Echo’), and pacing (‘Radyo’).
Instead, we have hollow scares that come from the obvious and the literal (the story is set in a morgue, after all), camerawork hell-bent on trying to scare you, incomprehensible editing, and a musical score that tries to elicit dread even when nothing has happened yet on screen.
‘Nightshift’ is the story of Jessie (played by the rather interesting Yam Concepcion), who is on overtime at her work at the morgue of a hospital. She’s been on duty for over 20 hours, but a huge storm has made the next shift unable to come to work. Jessie is also new to the job, on her seventh day, and her boss, the strange yet philosophical Dr. Alex (played with great joy by Michael de Mesa) keeps her company, plays the trick or two on the newbie, and shows her the ropes.
But before anything can be properly set up — before we actually get to know these characters, before we get to understand the narrative reality — the film already tries to scare us. The overbearing score hits early and really hard even if nothing is on screen that should scare us except for some dead bodies, which is actually part and parcel of what you would normally see in a morgue.
And then Jessie is constantly feeling a chill at the nape of her neck. Why? All we have going for us to feel scared is that she’s surrounded by dead people. But she’s in a morgue, so that is expected.
The wasted potential of the film is that as the film unfolds, there are frightening things that are happening. Strange sounds emanating from the bodies and random movements — but this is all science. Corpses, especially fresh ones, suffer from spasms; rigor mortis or “cadaver spasms” as Jessie recalls from her class. Dr. Alex also reminds her that the body expels gas, which explains the weird sounds.
But as the storm gets louder, and we get to know Jessie more — her past and her relationships — we realise that the strange things the film is trying to allude to might be more than just your run-of-the-mill horror story. Because this is a film that’s also about grief but it also makes pointed statements on the effect of overtime on employees; especially new ones in rather stressful situations.
Because, as the typhoon gets worse, Jessie stays longer than 20 hours and she has to keep the morgue running as more and more bodies are brought in and she begins to experience more and more strangeness.
The film works best in this mode. When it balances on the thin line between supernatural horror and psychological horror. Yam Concepcion is wonderfully committed and she has a screen presence that holds your attention. Everything else is amplified by the other cast from Michael de Mesa to the orderlies who wheel in the bodies played by Soliman Cruz and Epi Quizon to Ruby Ruiz, who plays the receptionist who worries about Jessie, alone in the morgue.
But Laranas insists on amping up the horror, overdoing the scenes when the bodies predictably get up to frighten her and a CGI spirit that chases after her in other scenes that end up as a fake out. Is the morgue really haunted or is she just exhausted? From the way the filmmaking is executed, we know Laranas is pushing for the former and that ruins the surprise.
The editing is strange because as the music swells to create dread, the shot doesn’t change so we have no idea what the score is trying to highlight. And then, it would fade out to show the passage of time. Because of the isolated and insular setting, the film ends up feeling small and almost better suited for streaming, if not television.
I’m a fan of Yam Laranas’ ‘Radyo’ and ‘Sigaw.’ I had a lot of reservations over the ending of ‘Aurora’ but I thought its first half was great. ‘Nightshift’ just doesn’t live up to the director’s older and stronger work. This is an example of a film that would have benefited much from restraint. Keeping the mystery and extending the question of the source of horror might have delivered a more satisfying experience. Instead, he throws us the full CGI and a kitchen sink ending that completely undermines the simplicity of the story and goes to where many horror films have gone before.
My Rating:
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