"Turno Nocturno" [The Haunting of the Immaculate Nurse (WTF jajaja)], and the Rigoberto Castañeda-James Wan dialectic

After almost twenty years of squeezing having directed Km 31, and a sequel I refuse to watch or acknowledge, Rigoberto Castañeda returns with another twist to a classical Mexican legend. In this case, is the turn of La Planchada, a ghost nurse that is said to torment hospitals all across the country; because in Mexico every legend ocurred in every city, and all of them are the original.

And what an obvious, descriptive and plain ridicule is the English title, which should have been translated to "Night Shift".

In the 1970s, in the Juarez Hospital in Mexico City, Rebecca (Paulina Gaitan) is applying for a job as a nurse in a shinningesque kind of scene, a gig she manages to get. But, she is in the night shift, twelve hours with low personel, just two more nurses, and some paranormal stuff starts to torment her if she does not follow a set of rules. She kind of manages to do this, but everything starts to complicate when Hortencia (Patricia Reyes Spíndola), the chief nurse, warns her about getting too close to and complying with the intensification of the paranormal activity of La Planchada. Also, Dr. Sánchez (Enoc Leaño) is very condescending towards her, another doctor (Tony Dalton) is sexually harrasing her, her true identity she kept as a secret seems compromised and an apparent murder has the police investigating the hospital.

To be honest, I have never been truly fan of the idea of taking Mexican legends and using them as the villains of horror films, as Castañeda did with La Llorona in Km 31. I believe this characters work best in the different and quite un-cinematographic language of folk oral fiction to tell in the dark with friends, and just looks like the capitalization of a preexisting value instead of bothering with creating your own monster. Yet, Turno Nocturno manages to give this legend a twist, and make it iconic. The image of a auto-desfigured girl dressed with a 1950s Mexican nurse uniform is really appealing and unique. I will also adventure myself to said that she is inspired in some japanese horror iconography as a desfigured and violent spirit that wears some kind of short uniform that highlights her femenine attributes, whom wants vengance on those who wrong her. Her cloth covering her mouth remembers of Something is Killing the Children comic. It is a mixture of different inspirations, horrific and sexual motifs, mainstream and explotative elements, a monster that can work as a dark eerie figure as well as a humorus over-the-top character.

One curious thing about Km 31 (as you can read in my text for The Undead Cinephile Society: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Wf0GHg_qEwBL_0QhBTdxeDRP_gok6GTB/view?usp=sharing), is that it is a proto-jameswanesque film. It premiered one year before Dead Silence, one of the most visually striking films I have ever seen, and many of its visual directorial gimmicks were seen before in the ghost third world movie of Castañeda. Even with this, Km 31 was the most important Mexican horror picture of its time, and Dead Silence was a complete critic and audience failure, but James Wan became one of the most profitable and attractive directors in Hollywood, and Rigoberto Castañeda just kept living on that single movie impact. I do not believe Wan copy Castañeda, not that one deserves better than the other, I really do not know nor care, it is just a curios fact. Castañeda kind of arrived first than Wan to multiple shots and directorial technicques in mid-2000s horror movies, which to me is something admirable.

Even when I was hoping something like that here in Turno Nocturno, it was not the case. It kind of inspires and constructs from the more new, contemplative, sober and slow cooking tendency. It is not really bad thing, just that instead of feeling like an innovative take as his magnum opus, this kind of feels like him just following the actual tendency. Simetrical, opressive full shots that cuts to a different thing without the need for raccord, more contained and wanna-be-unnotisable camera movements, and characters that talk between them more like exchanging-information-androids that humans. Castañeda does it well, but not really amazingly. In some moments, Castañeda breaks this style a little here and there, like more aggressive camera movements or jump-screams 101.

The production design is brutal and one of the best in mexican horror movies. The bright color palet of blue and white is like this retro and feel good place haunted and transgiversed by what is happening. It absolutely takes advantage of all occuring in a single location, very big by the way, but that can be put all the effort in to make it look like a conviencing 1970s hospital. Cinematography not helps this when the places are to well iluminated to be able to communicate what time is it or create an eerie sensation.

For good or bad, suddenly, the Rigoberto Castañeda I knew, returns. Before starting the third act, the movie becomes a dark horror gore comedy, with over-the-top killings, what I can describe as a little action piece, and an amazing payoff that is so METAL. Even with how much this could be enjoyed, it does breaks the tone that was trying to be constructed. Since the main character entered some kind of Stranger Things portal to a jameswanesque highly stylyzed villian headquartes, the movie is simply a different one. Also, now the mexican director is who inspires himself a lot from Wan's Malignant, an underrated and not very well understood masterpiece (maybe that is exagerating, but it is truly espectacular if you know how to watch it), where some characters, the twist, locations and even the idea of having an action climax are almost taken unchanged from this movie, but as a lesser and region 4 version. The cop that appears is the useless-law-enforcer-that-gets-in-the-protagonist-way archetype Wan uses, the action is what we can do in Mexico : ), and the twist could be seen by a blind person.

Not gonna lie, it is really enjoyable to watch, but not very original nor well achieved. Some serious moments strike as parody and some visual gags are not as funny as Castañeda believes. Yet, there is a lot to love here. Castañeda do find some cool and original ways to craft the horror moments, with clear top tier inspirations. From avoiding to put the monster on the screen when it would be suppossed to be there and false jump-scares, to moving the camera with the ghost in an amazing roll that ends up in a deutch angle that makes you feel the power La Planchada has over Rebecca. The more gory scenes are well earned, brutal to watch, satisfactory and there is a body horror scene where someone with the chest and abdomen open in the middle of a surgery rises from anestesia, starts bleeding and his guts keep falling out while the characters try to mantain everything in place, is something I have never seen before in other films. This makes the ticket price be worthy of paying.

Sadly, not everything could be that memorable. Other scenes feel kind of generic in its direction, and others are practically the same as ten minutes before but with a less creative direction; like at least use the well directed for the second time. Other scenes are directed just as transitory moments very unisnpired. Thankfully all direction mantains from competent to amazing craftmanship, so it could be so much worse… I have seen things…

The real issue is in the screenplay. The dialogues and character work is fine, the actors deliver, sometimes so melodramatic that ends on a telenovelesque tone, but specially Daton and Leaño are amazingly charismatic and interpret despicable sons of b*tches. But the topics, very heavy as they are, are managed in a morally infantiloid maner, superficial and one-notted, while trying to adress so many themes that it does not compromise with none of them. Many subplots and details are just forgotten, unlike the fifth of November, the twists and mysteries work as well as a freshly clean untinted window, multiple scenes are just repeating the same bit and even the order of some of them could be just changed to make more sense and generate a constant emotional rise.

Turno Nocturno is a horror movie that mixes Mexican legends and idiosyncrasy with a contemplative A24ish kind of horror, and a frosting of exploitative elements in a gore-fest. It has minor issues as generic directing, poor writing in structure and repetitive scenes, and sometimes the cinematography and color correction did not manage to create the atmosphere the location could transmit, but it really never becomes something problematic that truly breaks the experience, it is very moderate in that sense. Even with this, when the director puts passion and love for a scene, those scenes shine and are amazing to watch, demonstrating that Rigoberto Castañeda is, when he wants, the most visual striking director still working in the Mexican cinema industry that, similarly to La Planchada, had been dead for almost twenty years.

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Oswaldo Ferrer
I liked your article, it is well deserved, I invite you to visit and like mine - https://www.peliplat.com/es/article/10032428/LOKI:-El-antih%C3%A9roe-que-se-transform%C3%B3-en-un-verdadero-h%C3%A9roe
04:49 31 December, 2024
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Carlos CSC
61 likes with 26 visits, awesome...
03:04 14 December, 2024
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Alejandro Franco "Arlequin"
Good analysis. I hope to find it when it's streaming, it sounds interesting. I liked your article! If you have a few minutes, I invite you to read my note about the 2024 WTF Cinema Moment (And if you like it, give me your like and leave me a comment. Thx!): https://www.peliplat.com/en/article/10032416/What-Kind-of-an-American-are-You,-Civil-War,-2024
15:11 10 December, 2024
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