The Cursed
directed by Sean Ellis
directed by Sean Ellis
The Cursed harks back to the mid twentieth century Hammer Films period horror movies. The Cursed has a brief gratuitous nod to the salacious early seventies Hammer entries with a topless scene by actress Kelly Reilly. This came out of left field. It added nothing to the story except well, beauty, which is always worthwhile.
Some leading actresses have contract clauses refusing scenes with cleavage, toplessness, or nudity. Perhaps Reilly has a contract insisting that at least one such scene must be in her films. Snicker.
The Cursed updates some old horror myths. Like Stephen King's "Thinner" it centered the titular malediction in a crime against the local (in this case French) Roma minority population. An American viewer may see similarities to crimes against Black Americans and especially Native Americans. As the saying goes the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must. The Cursed references some Christian themes.
The film opens in 1916 during the WWI Battle of the Somme. A dying French officer is brought to the field hospital. The man has been hit just below the sternum with multiple machine gun bullets. Removing the bullets, the doctors discover a large silver bullet, something that didn't come from any German machine gun. Strange.
The film shifts back to the early 1880s. The French land baron Seamus Laurent (Alistair Petrie) is fighting what he considers to be Gypsy (Roma) trespassers on "his " land. The Roma have a good legal claim to (some of ?) his land. The Roma won't be bullied. They insist on their rights, rebuffing threats and bribes.
The village elders, priests, and lawyers approve a violent response. The elderly Roma matriarch knows danger approaches; she orders her people to recast some silver into something more intimidating. But it's to no avail.
The village elders, priests, and lawyers approve a violent response. The elderly Roma matriarch knows danger approaches; she orders her people to recast some silver into something more intimidating. But it's to no avail.
Seamus and his men attack and slaughter the Roma: men, women, and children. This was filmed with a long overhead shot which simultaneously distances and horrifies the viewer.
The killers force the Roma matriarch to watch her adult son be mutilated and crucified. Cursing the town, the matriarch is then buried alive with her silver item in front of the cross.
The town's children start having nightmares. This includes Seamus' daughter Charlotte (Amelia Crouch) and son Edward (Max Mackintosh). Various children are drawn to the atrocity's site. When a child digs up the silver item buried there, the curse begins.
With one child vanished and an unknown beast rampaging, Seamus and his wife Isabelle (Kelly Reilly) seek help from the itinerant pathologist John McBride (Boyd Holbrook), who knows something about Roma and the escalating attacks on townspeople.
The Cursed was convincing in terms of the character clothing and social attitudes. It was a little too dark visually. This made sense for dusk and nighttime scenes because there was no widespread electric light in the 1880s. It was less impressive in the daytime. Everything was blue or gray.
There is some explicit gore and effective scares. There's a lot of dread. The movie was about 20 minutes too long. It was a good reimagining of a creature that gets short shrift in modern horror films.
