Nociva – A Review

Parents with young children, viewer discretion is advised.  As a parent myself, watching ‘Nociva’ (Spanish word for “Harmful”) could trigger some anxiety who has kids going to grade school and not knowing which teacher they will have in class. Director Jesse Gasca Garcia lays out a plot in this short film that could lend itself to a bit of a grim reality that could happen in school.

The story is about a little girl named Arlene who was anxious of attending school, feeling tormented by a teacher she has in her class.  Mrs. Ramirez became suspicious about the teacher and eventually confronts him to save the kids from his twisted behaviour. The teacher seems to have psychological issues and uses his students to inject some kind of drug into each kids’ arms.

The scene of seeing the injections in a little boy’s arm was incredibly disturbing to watch, and knowing that the perpetrator is his teacher in the classroom.  The thought of that alone for any parent who finds out about an abusive teacher would develop into such a traumatic effect on the poor victims that were targeted for the teacher’s psychopathic behavior. The camera work was very poignant to showing the injection was triggering enough that the damage has already been done to the kids, and the parents of the kid would suffer knowing that they could not have done anything to protect them.

Schools are given the perception that health, safety, and security are the top priorities for giving the students a proper environment to thrive in education, without having to feel any threats throughout their day of their classes.  Having to slip through the cracks of bringing in questionable teachers could lead to the damaged reputation for that particular school, and may cause ripple effects to the communities around the school that find out about the horrible events that happened in their area.

The ripple effect would even go to angry parents who have kids going to that school, or live near the area of that school, to call the school out for the negligence that happened to those that were directly affected.  The anxiety of finding this type of news can be such a difficult feeling to have knowing that a family chose to live in a certain location in hopes that they found a safe neighbourhood for kids to settle into growing up.

One can only imagine what the innocent teachers and other school staff that work at that school feel about this type of situation happening in close quarters to them.  Having to think about it when coming to work could create a lot of fear of their own safety if the school remained open after stopping a psychopath teacher from causing further damage to the kids and the school’s reputation.

Worst of all, the moment the news and media outlets report this negative light to the school, it would take years for them to recover from this situation to rebuild their name as enrolment may be greatly affected down the years.  All of this is enough for anyone to blow this horrible news up to the point that there will be so many parties impacted and devastated to know that school safety was compromised, and the source just so happened to be the teacher as the perpetrator.

The thought of that alone after watching this would make any parent want to think twice of knowing which school their kids are going and how the teachers are in the school.  That is probably why they have parent-teacher meetings, school council meetings, and just ongoing communication between the school to parents through newsletters and emails to keep them informed of what is currently happening in the school. It is an effective way to build on the trust, which the short film may be suggesting for the school to move forward and addressing the fallout of the situation to making the school a top priority for safety and security.

‘Nociva’ is an impactful film. It provides some great learning lessons to the parents and staff at school as a reminder to always do the research to make sure that their kids are going to a safe school. Whatever the intentions that Jesse wanted to do with this film, it’s enough to generate conversations after watching the whole story unfold.