renezelwe The writers of most critical reviews of this film don't seem to realise a) that girls with a mental problem may not always shower naked, b) that actresses who play a certain type of girl will not necessarily be acting badly, and c) that blood and body parts will be fake or someone will investigate. What this film does do is make the characters, the effects and the storyline credible, and when you add in the accurate shooting (half of films made don't do this), and the way colours and contrasts are used, you have an intelligent and perfect or near perfect horrorfilm which can be enjoyed as many times as you want. The thing about good horror, and in particular good torture porn, is you have to get the blood colours right and this one does. Three American girls go to Thailand to teach children and become embroiled in local superstitions. That's it, but you will enjoy becoming engrossed in all the different parts of the plot if you just watch the movie with an open mind. People with closed minds hate horror they "think" is in any way sexualised. Thankfully for cinema, adults in democracies such as the U.S. and U.K. are allowed to choose their own entertainment, which is why Psycho exists.

Zebb67 Bad, buh-bad, bad, bad!!! Three young women travel to Thailand to teach young children (though they all look more like Victoria's Secret models forever strutting down a runway). Let's see, you have the irresponsible, horny blonde chick; the irresponsible, not-so-bright blonde chick; and the one smart, responsible chick (brunette of course--no cliché goes untouched in this cr*p). The chicks (I'm only using that word because that's clearly how the filmmakers view them) decide to party down before school starts, but it seems the house they are living in is haunted with...well, something or other. Some gory murders to wake you up, but since the victims are always tied down, there is no tension or suspense. Additional caveat for those interested: though the three chicks often prance around in their underwear and short-short shorts, there's no nudity. I guess they didn't want to lose their dignity. Why the rating for this garbage is not hovering around 2 or 3 suggests the cast and crew (and friends and relatives of both) were instructed to vote.

TdSmth5 In the intro we see some evil ceremony taking place. A guy on a chair is being bled. The blood is placed in some jar filled with golden jewelry. A blanked is covered in some symbols in blood. A girl is also on a chair. Next, someone beats the guy to death. Then it's the girl's turn.Three American girls travel to the Thai countryside to teach English. They reach their rented house and at the entrance is some little dollhouse that turns out to be a "spirit house." As soon as one the girls sees it, she reaches inside and for some reasons takes something. On the second story of the house is a golden life-size statue of a girl.The girls go out at night and meet 3 Brits. One of the girls has a boyfriend back home, the other two are sisters and slutty. Despite the objections of the taken girl, they end up with these guys back home. They drink something from one of them and get dizzy. Next thing you know, the girls act robotically and torture and kill the three guys. They wake up the next morning talking about this shared nightmare. And the golden statue is gone.They go to the market and seek to find info on such a statue. They see a girl who guides them out of the city to some soothsayer who speaks of the statue and the girl. She gives them a protective talisman but one of the girls throws it away.At night they start seeing the golden girl and other creepy stuff. They meet the neighbor whose old father has a confession to make. He knows about the girl. He tells them what happened in the intro and why.Unfortunately, Pernicious has a lot of problems. For one, there's no character development. The girls are cute, but we learn almost nothing about them. There's the good girl, the bad girl who doesn't care about anything, and the slutty girl. That's all we know. There's an odd discrepancy occasionally between what the girl say and what goes on. For example, once the girls arrive at the house, they marvel how old everything is. And yet nothing looks old at all. The filmmakers make little use of the settings in Thailand. They might as well have filmed this in Mexico. Unless the core of the story is part of Thai lore, but we never find out.On the positive side, the ending is neat and different. There's some gore but not a whole, but it is very cool. It looks like there are some subtle criticisms here as well, at least that's how I interpret them. For example, when the girls go shopping, one of them talks to the gorgeous Thai salesgirl as if she were talking to a monkey. Turns out the pretty Thai girl speaks English just fine. Or when the girls go the bar and meet the Brits, one of them says that they must be smart because they are British. Of course, if you watch a lot of Hollywood productions that's exactly the image they are trying to portray for some bizarre reason--all the bright, if not genius, characters are Brits and strangely enough there is no show or movie without a British character. Horror movies about the supernatural rarely succeed. This one could have used more horror, more scares, it's all just too dull.You sort of want to like Pernicious, but they really don't give us a lot of reasons

Leofwine_draca PERNICIOUS is a US/Thai horror film with a ridiculous storyline and even more ridiculous execution. It feels a little like the equally sleazy and explicit SICK NURSES, another Thai horror flick that emphasised outlandish gore over the niceties of plot and originality.This film's narrative concerns a trio of American bimbos who travel to rural Thailand to start teaching careers (when you see the characters of these women, you'll know how ridiculous and unbelievable that is). Before long they uncover a spooky golden statue in their rented home, are menaced by grisly dreams, and haunted by the spirit of a ghostly little girl.About the only thing this film has going for it is a fairly novel basis for the spooky goings-on: the use of child corpses in Thai black magic, something that fills real-life newspapers every now and then. It's a chilling premise, but this film soon turns into a silly rip-off of THE GRUDGE, except with really awful CGI effects instead of anything halfway decent. Bizarrely, there are also some extremely unpleasant gore sequences thrown into the mix, including one 'torture porn' dream sequence which is among the most explicit I've ever seen. It smacks of desperation in a film that otherwise struggles with poor acting, scripting, and a totally unmemorable playout.