The premise of Abner Pastoll’s horror film Nervous is sure to spark internet opinions: a woman suddenly becomes unable to hear men’s voices, while women’s voices sound crisp and clear.
It’s a topical hypothetical from the British-South African director of 2019’s A Good Woman Is Hard to Find that harnesses the power of feeling heard, with Nervous‘ central character isolated and dismissed by her husband as paranoid. Nervous creates a feeling that’s effectively captured through sound itself, with Pastoll’s team crafting an unsettling immersive experience — though there’s one element of the film that raised this critic’s eyebrows.
Premiered at this year’s FrightFest in London, Nervous demands to be experienced in a cinema — or at least with the best sound system you can find.
What is Nervous about?
Credit: February Films / Story Robot
Married couple Sarah (Sarah Bolger) and Sungsoo (Sungsoo Yune) — the actors’ characters share their real names — have plans to buy a house together, so when Sungsoo decides to go house hunting himself, surprising his wife with a furniture-less rural abode outside Seoul, she feels undermined by his attempted grand romantic gesture. It doesn’t help that there’s a strange woman milling around the house when they arrive, and reports of stabbings and disappearances in the area being reported on the radio.
Sarah is Irish, Sungsoo is Korean, with language an awkward but steadily evolving dynamic between them. However, Sarah’s feeling of isolation swells as she’s often spoken for in conversations and left to her own devices as a newly minted housewife. Sarah has left her career as an investigative journalist to run the household, with Sungsoo constantly referring to her inquiring mind as a negative; as obsessive, over-the-top “here you go again” behaviour. We learn over the course of the film why Sarah tends toward such insistent investigation, but before we get there, the couple discover a creepy black record player in the attic, equipped with a completely silent album.
After listening to this supposedly empty recording, Sarah starts to lose her ability to hear men, starting with an increasingly frustrated Sungsoo. But someone she can hear loud and clear is their mysterious and alluring neighbour, Eunbyeol (The Host‘s Ko Asung). Is Sarah’s experience medical? Or is there something more supernatural going on?
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Nervous is a triumph of sound design, of course
Credit: February Films / Story Robot
For the film to work, properly immersing the audience in a sense of auditory distinction, Nervous needs impeccable sound design. Thankfully, supervising sound editor Nick Baldock (Black Mirror) and his team create a fittingly rattling ride for the viewer, in which men’s voices become more muffled, women’s crisp and clear.
The task requires considerable craft from the actors, especially Bolger, with sharp editing from Pastoll, visceral foley artistry, and compelling cinematography from Jungmin Lee that plays with depth of field to determine Sarah’s focus. And it’s paired with some grisly body horror elements, with watch-through-your-hands gore from visual effects artists Mykola Shurin and Howard Gardner. Nervous will have you painfully aware of each and every sound after you leave the cinema.
Nervous plays with oppressed desire through a tired trope
Credit: February Films / Story Robot
As Sarah’s focus pulls from the men in her life — her husband, doctors, friends — Nervous plays with desire through the character of Eunbyeol. It’s here the film unfortunately falls into the “depraved bisexual” trope, in which Eunbyeol is presented as the temptress next door, a lust-fueled predator poised to disrupt the film’s main “conventional” marriage. While Ko’s bold performance brings nuance and genuine likability to the character, the film itself seems set against her through sexually charged cinematography and editing, and non-existent backstory in the script.
It’s a shame the film leans into such a stale trope, as it undermines the effective central message of women feeling unheard, not believed, and being portrayed as paranoid. While Sarah’s burgeoning desire is portrayed as innocuous, Eunbyeol is seen as a vamp dancing on a moral compass. Bolger and Ko’s chemistry here is undeniable, but to see this stereotype still pervading 2026 cinema is frustrating.
While this element of the film is disappointing, the effect of the film overall is memorable, as a spark-igniting speculation on what it means to be heard or to truly hear others as a woman. Pastoll uses the horror genre to consider the inner workings of a couple, the idea of broken trust, and a sense of gender roles informing behaviour. Make sure you watch it at full volume.
Nervous was reviewed out of FrightFest in August 2026. Cinematic release details are TBC.
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