I’ve been keeping a closer eye on Cambodian horror lately because there are some genuinely interesting ideas coming out of the country, and The Nail is one of those films that could well fit into interesting terrority.
The Cambodian title is ធ្វើ ក្រចក, which roughly translates to Do Nails, and the film opened in Cambodia on July 23, 2026 – it’s a fairly short 89-minute horror film, directed by Mak Pichjuli and written by Hun Viputhyreach. (IMDb )
And the job at the centre of the story sounds harmless enough.
Until you realise the customer is dead.
Nich Gets a Very Strange Booking
Nich, a young nail technician, receives a mysterious message asking her to travel to an isolated village and prepare the nails of a recently deceased woman before the funeral – I don’t think I’d be particularly enthusiastic about driving out to some remote village to do a dead person’s nails, but Nich apparently decides this is a perfectly reasonable way to spend an afternoon.
Unfortunately, the woman in question isn’t exactly the end of the story, as Nich soon discovers that she has been deliberately brought to the village because a secretive cult wants to use her as a human sacrifice.
So what looked like a strange beauty appointment turns out to be a trap, and that’s about as bad a customer service experience as you’re likely to have.
Trailer
Mak Pichjuli Directs
Mak Pichjuli directs The Nail from a screenplay by Hun Viputhyreach – the film stars Tin Chii and Seanghuy Heab, with Bun Channimol credited as producer, and the film is listed as a Cambodian horror production in Central Khmer, with its Cambodian theatrical release dated July 23, 2026.
There’s not a huge amount of internationally available production information, which isn’t particularly surprising for a Cambodian genre film this new.
A lot of these smaller Asian horror releases can be difficult to find information about outside their home market, and sometimes that’s where you find the more unusual stuff.
Cambodian Horror With a Very Local Setup
The film’s use of a remote village, funeral preparations and a secretive group gives it a distinctly local setting rather than simply dropping a generic demon into a Cambodian landscape, which is fine, as I don’t need every movie to give me a history lesson, but I do want the horror to feel like it belongs to the place where the story is happening.
The Nail seems to be doing that through the funeral setting and the contrast between Nich’s ordinary modern job and the beliefs of the people who have brought her into the village, and that contrast is probably where I’d expect the film to get most of its mileage.
The Cult Is What I’m Most Curious About
Cult horror can be difficult to pull off – It’s incredibly easy to make a group of supposedly terrifying occultists look like people who have wandered in from a Halloween party, and we’ve all seen it – a dozen people in robes stand around chanting something, somebody starts waving a knife about and we’re apparently supposed to be terrified.
So I’m hoping The Nail does something a little more with its cult, and the idea that Nich is simply surrounded by ordinary-looking people who have all agreed that she is going to die is much creepier to me than a bunch of obvious horror-movie weirdos.
If the film can make that community feel normal on the surface while slowly revealing what they’re actually planning, then the setup could work very well.
Tin Chii Leads the Film
Tin Chii takes the central role of Nich, with Seanghuy Heab also among the principal cast – Heab is also appearing in another 2026 Cambodian horror film, The Night Mother Return Home, so he’s becoming a familiar face in this year’s Cambodian genre releases.
For a film that runs only 89 minutes, I also think that could be an advantage, as there’s not much room for the story to wander off into unnecessary subplots.
Get Nich to the village.
Show us something isn’t right.
Let her realise she’s trapped.
Then get on with the nightmare.
That’s about the speed I want from this sort of horror, as the idea of a nail technician being lured to an isolated village under the pretence of preparing a corpse for a funeral, only to discover she’s been brought there as a sacrifice, is a pretty damn good horror setup on its own.
What I’m wondering is how far the film takes the supernatural side of it.
The cult and sacrifice angle are already disturbing enough, but the material around the dead woman suggests there’s more going on than simply a group of people deciding to kill someone, and that’s the bit I’d want the film to explore.
Personally, I’d rather see The Nail keep things relatively simple and nasty than suddenly pile on five different supernatural explanations in the final twenty minutes.
At 89 minutes, it also doesn’t have much excuse for padding, which is another reason I’m interested, as this sounds like the kind of Cambodian horror film that could get in, tell its horrible little story and get out before the premise wears thin.
And after seeing the number of horror films where somebody ignores an ancient warning because they’re bored, a woman simply turning up for work and discovering she’s been selected for sacrifice feels like a refreshingly terrible way to have a bad day.
Check out some more Cambodian horror movies.
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