Shudder Saturday: The Nightshifter (2018)

A horror movie with a solid thriller idea at heart, this is an impressive piece of work from director Dennison Ramalho, who has been honing his craft over the past couple of decades with a selection of shorts (as well as his work as a writer on Embodiment Of Evil, the last full feature to be based completely around the character of Coffin Joe).

Daniel de Oliveira plays Stênio, a nightshift morgue worker who has a gift for speaking with the dead. Not in any standard way, there's no ouija board used here. They just start speaking to him. This leads to him learning a lot of secrets. When he decides to get revenge on the man who is having an affair with his wife, Stênio trades one of those secrets, subsequently cursing himself and those closest to him. Because secrets being taken to the grave aren't supposed to be shared around.

Starting off with the kind of visceral sights you would expect to see in a morgue, and also taking no time at all to show the unique gift that Stênio has, The Nightshifter quickly shows that it is taking viewers through territory that is outright horror. That's a good way to present the material, front-loading with the gore and the supernatural core, because once events begin to unfold it becomes easier to view this as an impressive noir, albeit one wearing a blood-spattered overcoat.

Ramalho manages to distract you further from this realisation, thanks to his skilful direction and his work co-writing the script with Cláudia Jouvin (adapting a novel by Marco de Castro). That's not to say that he skimps on any solid scares, or further helpings of gore. You get both throughout the movie, it's just that they're more sparingly used than they could have been, and the film is all the better for it. The focus is on one man, the one bad decision he makes and the repercussions of that. You know . . . much like a lot of other noirs.

De Oliveira is very good in the lead role, believable even when surrounded by corpses that are much more talkative than usual. He also perfectly portrays the growing desperation of a man becoming more boxed in by a growing threat, always trying to protect his loved ones ahead of anyone else. Fabiula Nascimento is equally good in a very different role. She plays Odete, the unfaithful wife, and gets to deliver a number of succinctly menacing lines of dialogue. The other main cast member to mention is Bianca Comparato, doing well in the role of a young woman who ends up unwittingly singled out as a suitable sacrifice to end the curse.

A very impressive first feature from Ramalho, this is a highly entertaining blend of standard scares, some more offbeat moments, and the failings of human nature. I recommend it to both horror fans and those who don't mind their thrillers with a bit more blood 'n' guts than most.

8/10

The Nightshifter is currently available on Shudder.