PERNICIOUS Interview - James Cullen Bressack and review

Matt Mungle chatted with James Cullen Bressack (Hate Crime, To Jennifer, My Pure Joy) about his new film PERNICIOUS. 

The writer/director talked about the story, what makes for good horror, and the loyal fans. 

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Releases: Now on Blu-ray DVD

Synopsis: Pernicious, starring Emmy-nominated Emily O’Brien (Young and the Restless), Ciara Hanna (Power Rangers) and Jackie Moore (100 Ghost Street), is “a carnival for the eyes” (Dread Central)  and “sexy, bloody, and heinous” (Horror News). The movie tells of three young girls, holidaying in Thailand, who unleash the spirit of a murdered child with only one thing on her mind - revenge. 

Review: Rusty Ryan - Pernicious is a low budget, but ambitious horror film from writer/director James Cullen Bressack. 
It does have an attention-getting opening that features the murder/sacrifice of a man and a child. Not to worry, it’s handled in a creative way that is not bloody or gratuitous. The hard core stuff comes later.

Fast forward to three American girls showing up at a remote Thai house for a teaching job. The three actresses are beautiful but unfortunately their dialogue and delivery of such, leave much to be desired.

They quickly and unwittingly help to release the spirit of the dead child that is being held inside a life-size golden statute that just happens to be in their house. The film escalates into a ghostly possession mystery that features lots of torture porn. The special effects are actually very creative and very bloody. Now toss in a few ghostly appearances of the girl’s spirit that will immediately remind horror fans of Ringu and The Grudge. Really, it will IMMEDIATELY remind you of those movies. I will leave it at that.

I will say that the location shots are beautiful and I did note how the director keeps the camera moving to add a little more interest to overhead and tracking shots. He is trying hard and that is noticeable.

The film contains some foul language but no sex or nudity. The torture and scenes of violence are gory and extremely bloody.

In short, Pernicious is a messy ghost/torture-porn horror film with questionable acting and dialogue. It does contains a few slightly scary scenes. It’s special effects involving torture are bloody, explicit and technically well done. The three female leads are easy on the eyes but unfortunately the cinematic goings-on are just too distracting to pull the viewer in. It never has a sense of dread and it is hard to take the torture scenes too seriously.

It’s worth a rental if this happens to be your cup of tea. But I seriously doubt if most people will be coming back for multiple viewings.

2 out of 5 stars.