Originally premiering at Sundance Film Festival last year under the title Eight for Silver, a better title if you ask me, Sean Ellis’s The Cursed doesn’t exactly make the best first impression, but eventually comes together be a true gem of a horror movie.
The film is a period piece horror movie that brings viewers into a small nineteenth century French village where supernatural events and a mysterious beast begin to haunt and slaughter the family of land baron, Seamus Laurent (Alistair Petrie) and the people of the nearby village. As things become worse, pathologist John McBride (Boyd Holbrook) comes to investigate the occurrences and discovers a horrifying truth about a curse placed on the land that’s summoned a deadly beast to exact revenge.
The Cursed doesn’t exactly get off on the right foot as it struggles to make its story engaging or easy to comprehend. The first trailer made it tough to piece together what exactly The Cursed was about since it just looked like a bunch of horror imagery mashed together with no real story direction. The same thing kind of happens for the first act of the film, as the editing can be choppy and the story doesn’t have a clear direction. Sometimes, the film will have this big, terrifying moment happen and then just fade to black to a scene that doesn’t directly connect to the scene before, creating a disjointed viewing experience.
Some films that struggle to get viewers hooked can’t recover, but The Cursed actually gets better with time. What it may not have in cohesive storytelling at first, it more than makes up for in its chilling horror imagery. Its depiction of real-life war horrors and the tragedy that inspired the film’s central curse are brutally gut-wrenching and immediately make you uneasy. The Cursed has one of the most grotesque and horrifying scarecrows in the entire genre—especially because you see how it comes to be. Even the recurring dream sequences have this haunting atmosphere that feels perfectly foreboding. The most intriguing dark visual of The Cursed, though, is the silver fangs that play a central role in the film’s excellent werewolf mythos.
As The Cursed delves deeper into the mythos of its terrifying beast, it creates this fascinating lore that blends classic werewolf mythos and aspects of the Wendigo. Each new detail and discovery add another layer to the dangers and power of the beast. Every attack feels rightfully vicious and blood-soaked and honestly, the fate of those who get bitten and survive is somehow more terrifying. No one ever feels too safe, and the entire last act is a foggy nightmare, with Ellis’s cinematography and the dense setting working beautifully together to create a tense finale. Not to mention, the creature design is excellent as Ellis excellently builds up the full reveal throughout and things only become more horrifying when the group finally cuts into one.
Even the story itself just becomes more intriguing as the werewolf mythos becomes a bigger part of the film, especially with Holbrook’s strong leading performance. His screen presence adds this inquisitiveness throughout the film that’s easy to connect to and frankly, he’s just a very likeable character, something that isn’t found much with the main villagers or Laurent for good reason. McBride’s ingenuity and capableness is a ton of fun to watch play out as he hunts the beast and scolds those who have done wrong. His personal arc is also strong and the way he leads the film into divulging its mythos is great right up until the end.
It’s very satisfying how those cryptic silver teeth have their own history and come back to play a pivotal role in defeating the beast. The film’s ending definitely goes out of its way to overexplain itself and connect dots that already seem clear, yet it still remains satisfying, and the last act is a non-stop horror ride full of bloodshed and heart-pounding suspense.
The Cursed isn’t without its issues, but its self-built lore and strong horror elements make it a must watch for any fans of the genre to get a different vision of a classic werewolf story.
