To think, there was a time when I avoided horror movies. But in more recent years, I have developed a taste for a certain type of horror, namely ones that rely on mood and atmosphere over jumpscares and gore. Granted, putting jumpscares and gore into a horror movie that has good mood and atmosphere is fine by me, but I prefer the former to the latter. Additionally, I have something of a softspot for werewolves, despite the fact that vampires, zombies, and even Frankenstein’s monster have probably been featured in more well-known movies. It’s probably due to budget reasons. Let’s face it: it is far easier to do a lower budget vampire or zombie flick than anything involving body transformation.
Then I heard some good things about the new movie The Cursed, a period horror movie involving werewolves and, well, I’ll stop here.
After a scene set somewhere that I have seen quite a bit of in recent movies, the action begins in 19th century France. A wealthy gentleman named Seamus Laurent (Alistair Petrie) and some other elders in the area they all share have learned of some Romani that are setting up camp on land the Romani can (credibly) claim is theirs. That doesn’t sit well with Seamus and his peers, so they do what they feel they need to in order to claim the land for themselves and get rid of the Romani nomads. However, it turns out the Romani have a secret, something they have both been protecting and has been protecting them, and it appears initially to take the form of a set of dentures made of human jawbones and teeth forged from melted silver. Seamus’s actions don’t sit well with the Romani for reasons I will not get into, and so, the land may very well be cursed.
That comes at a cost when Seamus’s young son Edward (Max Macintosh) is attacked and then disappears. Soon, people in the area are starting to die violently in what look like animal attacks. There’s a cholera outbreak, so sending for the army to hunt the beast will need some solid evidence that the soldiers are even needed, and while visiting pathologist John McBride (Boyd Holbrook) seems to know a thing or two about what’s happening, that won’t help much if people don’t tell him everything they know, and there are a lot of secrets out there, and some people might not recognize how much their own actions have brought all this down on them.
There’s a lot to like about writer/director/cinematographer Sean Ellis’s movie. His werewolf mythology is familiar enough for moviegoers but unique enough to set up its own rules. The movie further features one of the most horrifying scarecrows I have ever seen in any movie, and I felt like this one had some of the best sound editing I’ve seen in a horror movie ever, where a suggestion of something starts with a sound of some kind that is revealed to be something else entirely. Yeah, the werewolf itself is maybe not the best, but it’s unique-looking, and given the CGI could have been better, the movie does what it can to keep it off-screen as much as possible. I come to these things for creepy atmosphere, and this movie largely devliered.
My sole objection is Ellis’s use of nightmares as a source for scares. Yes, there’s an in-movie reason for these scary dreams, but he goes to that well a few too many times. But beyond that, I got a good, creepy movie with great tension and good performances from a lot of actors I don’t recognize. I think I am going to keep an eye out for more movies from Sean Ellis. If he can produce a high quality period piece werewolf movie like this, I figure his future work will likewise be worth my time and attention.
Grade: A-
0 Comments