Irish star headlines excellent new psychological thriller

JOE spoke to the director and star of the new movie that just had its world premiere and dropped its first trailer.

The film sees Bolger play Sarah, a young Irish woman who moves with her husband, Sungsoo (Sungsoo Yune), to a remote area of the South Korean countryside, one recently rocked by a series of unusual murders and disappearances.

In their new home, the pair uncover a strange object: an unmarked vinyl record that appears to play nothing but silence. After listening to it, however, Sarah slowly begins to lose the ability to hear men’s voices.

This further strains the already rocky marriage, while heightening Sarah's feelings of isolation. As the Irish woman’s grip on reality starts to fracture, she finds herself drawn to her and Sungsoo’s enigmatic new neighbour (Asung Ko), whose raw sensuality unsettles and entices her.

Watch the trailer for Nervous right here:

Yet, thanks to Pastoll’s stylish, hazy direction, which makes the viewer feel as discombobulated as its lead character, and woman-of-the-moment Bolger’s fiercely likeable central turn, Nervous balances its seeming warring tones with aplomb.

It also ties up its many plot threads with a finale that feels totally surprising in the moment yet inevitable in hindsight, the mark of a good ending.

Sarah Bolger and director Abner Pastoll on Nervous

JOE spoke with director Abner Pastoll and Sarah Bolger ahead of the movie's world premiere at FrightFest in London, which took place this week (Thursday, 27 August).

Nervous came about because Pastoll, his co-writer Richard Hobley, and Bolger had planned to make another film together. However, when that project stalled, the two writers - frustrated by the industry’s glacial pace - decided to stop waiting. They became determined to write and shoot another movie quickly.

Before a word of the script existed, Pastoll called up Bolger. He asked if she wanted to make a movie in South Korea, where the director lives. He pitched her the basic premise. Bolger said she didn’t hesitate a beat.

"We did have chats before this movie was page one, where we were spitballing ideas. Something was cooking in our brains. Regardless of Nervous, we were going to go work together again soon," the Irish actress recalled to JOE.

"Once we had this story ironed out, and to a place where they could go write it, I think at that point I was so invested… I was like: 'No one else is going to make this now. It has to be me.'"

As such, the role of Sarah was written specifically for Sarah Bolger. On this, Pastoll noted: "Having worked with her on A Good Woman is Hard to Find, we just really connected on a creative level and just as friends and the type of stories we want to tell, the characters we want to explore. 

"So, I've been trying to make another movie with her for years, and there have been projects that have come and gone, haven't materialised. So, that was part of the whole thing in making this. I was like: 'Well, let's just go and make it. Sarah, do you want to do this?' And she was like: 'Yeah, it sounds great.'

"I wrote the character for her, knowing her personality and her abilities. Yet she was still able to surprise me and excite me. Part of our process that we have developed together is expanding on what's on the page and letting it evolve, if that makes sense."

As for how the script developed, Bolger recounted: "We did many a Zoom call from the beginning of the script to what it ended up being before we went and filmed. 

"So they were very collaborative, and I was very involved. In truth, it was just about creating something that felt [new]. It's an interesting and hard thing to capture something less cinematic and more audible [referring to the story's exploration of sound and silence]. 

"So, I think to create something in that space, which I just felt like hadn't been done before, no better man than Abner and Richard to write something so beautiful and so silent."

Sarah Bolger in Nervous

Bolger has starred in many horror movies to date, including Descendant, Emelie, The Lazarus Effect, and The Moth Diaries.

When we asked the actress what appeals to her about the genre, she said: "I think horror has the unique ability to tell multiple stories at the same time, and sort of disguise true harrowing tales… harrowing as in poetically sad, a truthfulness wrapped up in a concealed weapon of horror. 

"That element, I think, of a shared experience in a theatre of feeling that cautiousness or feeling that the edge of your seat or feeling that jump or feeling that scream or feeling that tension, it can really bond an audience and I just think they're great things to be in theatres."

It's true that Nervous "conceals" relatable, everyday emotions and topics under its genre framework. Bolger said she was particularly drawn to the story's exploration of isolation.

"If I were to describe this movie, I'd be like: 'It's a movie about isolation in truth.' Like, isolation from yourself, isolation from the things you know, the things you desire, losing yourself," she explained.

In the press notes, Pastoll said he wanted to explore the psychological effects of losing the ability to hear the person you love, while also layering in elements of cultural displacement. The latter is a theme he's always been drawn to, being born in South Africa, but raised in London and never quite feeling from either place.

Sungsoo Yune in Nervous

The director described the film in a statement as being "about a marriage on the edge, and the terrifying silence that fills the space between two people when desire, guilt, and fear are left unspoken".

"What begins as a distance between them becomes something much more invasive: a silence that distorts perception, intimacy, and control. I was drawn to the idea of silence not as absence but as presence, and a force that can be as violent and consuming as truth itself.

"Nervous explores how unresolved emotions and hidden desires can possess us more completely than anything else, and how even silence has something to say," a quote that provides the movie with its tagline.

All that being said, Bolger also sees humour in the movie's premise. When we note that for many wives, not being able to hear their husband would be a dream come true, she responded enthusiastically: "Absolutely!

"There's been so many people, every time I tell them the broad strokes of this movie, they're like: 'Well, that's great.' It's a fantasy."

There was one element of the script that Bolger and Pastoll disagree on. This came up when we asked Bolger if there was a meta element to her making the movie. This is because Nervous was shot in South Korea, the actress was the only non-Korean cast member, and she's also playing an Irish woman named Sarah in the Asian country growing increasingly isolated.

On whether the experience of making the movie helped her portrayal of the character, Bolger said it did to an extent, but was quick to add: "Although I had such a wonderful group around me who became such close friends.

"I didn't feel the same levels of [isolation], but I did fight Abner almost every day to try and get him to change the name of the character, so it wasn't Sarah.

"He loved it being Sarah. I was like: 'I just don't want people to think that there is a meta element to this,'" she confessed, laughing.

"But I think the movie is amazing, and he can name the characters whatever he wants to."

Ko Asung and Sarah Bolger in Nervous

Pastoll gave his perspective on this in a separate interview with JOE, telling us: "She played a character called Sarah in Good Woman, and now she's playing Sarah again. So, we were joking that maybe she'll always play Sarah in my movies. She'll always be a different version of Sarah."

When we say the pair need to complete the Sarah trilogy, the director replies: "For sure. If there's the right story and the right characters, whether I write a new one for her or if there's another script that I come across that I think she would be good for, we definitely want to continue that as much as we can."

Pastoll has said that "momentum" was the entire point of making Nervous. According to him, there were only seven or eight months between him and his co-writer Richard Hobley's first discussions about Nervous and when filming began. Then, half a year later, the movie was finished.

Speaking to JOE, Pastoll said making the movie independently, with friends, and on a smaller scale than his previous projects had many benefits.

"It was a great experience to do it that way. I want to continue making movies in that way, because there's a great energy about it," he notes.

"It was therapeutic in a way because I didn't have any strange notes or worries about having to meet certain guidelines by a studio or production company. I was basically just able to explore something that I wanted, tell a story I wanted to tell with almost no interference. 

"I was collaborating with amazing people like Sarah and my producers. Everyone had this great energy like: 'Let's make something great together'. There was nothing imposed on us and no worrying about the bigger picture. We were just trying to tell a good story."

We then asked Pastoll if he had much interference on his earlier movies: 2019's A Good Woman is Hard to Find and 2015's Road Games.

"All of my films have been independently produced so far. I have been involved in Hollywood productions and things that just haven't materialised for various reasons, but mostly because of creative issues, things that block the process," the director explained.

"But, I would say that [Nervous], for me, was probably the most difficult but most exciting project. Difficult in terms of it was done on a much smaller scale than my previous films, but it feels bigger to me in terms of the storytelling. 

"We cut a lot of those voices out [on Nervous]. From the first two films, even though they're independently produced and independently financed, there's always weird notes and stuff that come in that you have to deal with. Whereas this one was very minimal. We would just get on with it."

When we asked if there were any particularly ridiculous notes he got on his earlier films, Pastoll replied: "Oh, there's too many, too many. Honestly, there's too many."

He added: "I think on my first film, one of the executive producers, because I also edit my movies, he was like: 'Oh, you've got to get an editor to do this because this movie's not working'.

"Having been editing the film for eight weeks at the time, I was so exhausted but [I said]: 'Fine, let's interview some editors, see if somebody can bring some unique perspective on it.'

"And then I met with some top editors, and one guy that we had a meeting with was like: 'I don't know what you want me to do. The film's great.'

"Things like that. There's plenty of stories to tell. I could probably write a whole book about all of the weird things that I've had to worry about."

"Making this film together, it was difficult. It had its hardships, but what an absolute dream and a joy.

"I haven't seen the finished product tonight, but I cannot wait to. So I think it'll be a big round of applause for him."

Nervous had its world premiere at FrightFest London 2026.