My progression of internal emotions during the course of this movie was as follows:
I hate this -> I want to like this -> I wish this was done better
Pernicious starts with us watching a silhouetted blood sacrifice ritual. We can tell that there is an adult being sacrificed as well as a child being involved somehow but we don't quite get the whole picture yet. I really just wanted to know then and hope it would save me the next hour of whatever was about to come. It didn't. It made me wait. Fuckin' jerk movie!
This film takes place somewhere deep in Thailand. By deep, I mean that the entire opening credits sequence is our main characters taking a train, then a cab, and then a boat to the house they're staying at. Apparently they are three American college girls that are coming there to teach English to children. We learn quickly that these girls are quite likely going to be terrible protagonists as one of them starts their visit by stealing an amulet from a spirit altar out of just plain ignorance to the culture. This is also followed by a brief "white savior" conversation that made me want to flip my coffee table.
They take a look around their new digs and find a gold statue of a prepubescent girl upstairs. I guess they assume this is normal for Thailand and unpack and sleep. The next morning they have to go to town where one of the girls does that thing Americans do in foreign countries and speak English really loud and slow to someone they already don't think speaks the language. Of course the woman speaks perfect English, and she should have told our girl to fuck right off, but instead tells her the price of a purse in their currency and converts it to the USD for her. Suck on that college girl! Our ladies pick-up on two guys following them and attempt to confront them. The guys bail because of creeper reasons and the girls go home and decide to go to a club.
This club starts with super loud dubstep music playing, but everyone is just sitting around like it's a coffee shop. Also, there is the worst music cut I have ever heard in a film here where it goes from the dubstep song playing to some more quiet house music the moment the girls are about to talk with no transition. The conversation sucks and they order a fishbowl of booze. It's an actual fishbowl. A British douche comes up and begins aggressively hitting on one of the girls that keeps giving him the brush off. He leaves all pissed only to go sit with the two guys that were following them all earlier.
Here is where and why I reach the point that I can't stand this girls. They decide to go sit and talk and drink with the guys. Creepers that were following you are suddenly dudes you want to drink and make out with? You have some serious issues ladies. Everyone ends up back at the girl's place, the girls drink from a flask and the threat of date rape has become seriously real as they black out. Thankfully, that isn't what happens or I would've re-rolled for another movie. We are then treated to 20 minutes of torture porn where the girls have tied up each of the guys separately and cut eyes or tongues out of them and kill the guys.
Morning comes and they all had "crazy dreams" last night. The realize all their gold jewelry is gone as well as the statue. They call the housing/teaching people only to find there was never a statue at all! OOOOOOOOOOOO 2SPOOKY 5ME! This causes our girls to go back to the village and ask about the statue. They end up following a small Thai girl (do I even need to say anything here), to what ends up being some sort of witch's shack. This woman is so over the top I want to hang out with her. Just constantly on a witchy 10. The small girl vanishes and the woman produces a photo of the statue. She then acts really vague about it but tells them it's a Kumari.
Here's where I'm going to break and tell you that it is not a fucking Kumari. A Kumari is a "living goddess" basically where they believe the body of a living prepubescent girl is inhabited by a deity. It is not a golden statue of a vindictive brat.
The girls find out that faux Kumari is made via some blood sacrifice ritual (remember the beginning of the movie? I hope not, because you probably shouldn't watch this shit). That night we finally see the girl spirit doing some serious J-horror type stuff such as crawling out from under things, hiding in your bed, sticking the the corner of a ceiling like Spider-Man, all that stuff. The thing that makes her not scary though is that while her body is painted gold, they apparently gave her the WWE's Goldust's entrance wig instead of just spraying her hair gold. Seriously, look at this shit!
Invisible blowjob!
I'm done talking about this movie so here's the sum up. The family that used to live in the house was a father, pregnant mother, and daughter. The wife was going to die from a disease so he decided to do this ritual where he would sacrifice himself, turn his daughter into this statue thing, and his wife would live. His brother (now an old man next door) was going to help. So they do the ritual and the brother finds the wife upstairs, dead from a suicide. The spirit of the girl was now restless as the ritual had no way to do what it was supposed to and our trio of winners here became the targets after the amulet was removed from the spirit altar.
The youngest ends up being possessed by the girl spirit, kills the the other girls and the spirit itself kills like fucking everybody else in this movie. I don't care. These girls sucked, the old dude was cool, fuck those English dudes, and I can't stop looking at how dumb that picture is above.
The plot to this movie is really good, cultural fuck-ups aside. I guess this is a case of liking the story, but not the means in which the story is told to me. There's something there, but it needs a better person to really bring it out.
I give Pernicious two Goldusts out of five:
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