Review:
I was initially pretty skeptical about “The Cursed.” After premiering to mixed reactions under the title “Eight for Silver” at Sundance 2021, the film faded away for a bit, reportedly to undergo a nip/tuck that might speed up the heat on its slow burn suspense. When it returned under its new title a year later, “The Cursed” curiously chose to play only in theaters, despite VOD debuts becoming the new norm in a post-pandemic world.
I hadn’t heard a whole lot of noise for the film ahead of its wide release, although I did see a poster pop up on a nearby bus shelter normally reserved for big blockbusters like “Spider-Man: Far from Home.” Marketing was evidently in motion, even if that was the only instance that made it to my eyes. Trailers may have been pushing it too, except “The Cursed” still seemed like a mid-tier thriller oddly suited for theatrical exclusivity since it didn’t come from a major studio. Not helping to discredit that notion was a release date that went head-to-head with Netflix’s much-ballyhooed “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” (review here), a fierce rival guaranteed to eat up all of horror fandom’s attention during that opening weekend.
“The Cursed” also takes place in English countryside circa 1882 and clocks in at almost two hours. Taking everything together, including a pair of WWI bookends, outward appearances essentially had “The Cursed” shaping up to be a period piece snoozer anxious to disappear quickly with the film distribution equivalent of an Irish goodbye.
New reviews kept raving about it though. Some fans appeared excited to support the movie simply because it was a rare theatrical release for indie horror. What finally moved the needle on my curiosity was seeing someone liken “The Cursed” to a classic Hammer horror production. I’m stretching a bit to make an original analogy, but one might even similarly describe “The Cursed” as what a Universal Monster movie could look like with a 21st-century arthouse approach. Strip out the B-movie cheesiness of bug-eyed performances and Saturday matinee melodrama with painted soundstage backdrops. Keep the werewolf curse, gypsies (the term used in the movie), constables and vicars, tight-knit old town, torches, foggy forests, and horse-drawn carriages and what remains is a quietly creepy chiller.
If we’ve learned anything from “Drag Me to Hell’s” Mrs. Ganush, it’s that Hell hath few furies like an old gypsy woman scorned. When a land dispute turns ugly, community elders led by a wealthy manor master solve their problem by hiring murderous mercenaries to lay waste to a gypsy camp. Cruelly making an example out of them, one gypsy has his limbs hacked off so he can be turned into a scarecrow. Another gypsy becomes buried alive in a body pit, although not before she releases the curse contained in a set of silver teeth fashioned from the coins Judas received for betraying Jesus.
The settlement soon becomes beset by a beast. Most of the men attribute the attacks to a wolf. John McBride believes the culprit is a different creature altogether. A pathologist who tragically lost his wife and daughter to similar circumstances, John has come to town to investigate a suspicion of something more sinister than a wild animal. Setting up shop in the landowner’s mansion, John embarks on an investigation to uncover the truth before the monster in the woods slaughters any additional villagers.
Even though it traffics mainly in mood, “The Cursed” isn’t entirely on par with the “elevated” horror of an exclusively atmospheric A24 production. Most of its meanderings are relegated to amplifying gloomy environments, not musing on mundane millennial ennui. Scattered instances of action-intensive gore also intermittently pull it back into midnight movie territory.
But “The Cursed” can still be called a prim-and-proper scary movie. If “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” is the boisterous bad kid barking from the back of the classroom, then “The Cursed” is a boarding school preppy who plays first chair violin. Certain temperaments will encounter difficulty in dealing with that starched-shirt stuffiness the longer it drags on. Those attuned to this type of gothic terror on the other hand, will become draped in the elegantly eerie dread of its sophisticated style.
Regardless of how ticklish anyone’s fancy is for the film, some of the suspicions seeded by initial skepticism do bear a few prickly pieces of fruit. It seems unavoidable for any movie with this make-up. Particularly in the fattier portions of its patiently paced midsection, “The Cursed” ambles through several sleepier spells and gets caught up in negligible sequences in need of an editor’s knife. It’s not designed for attention-grabbing intensity. Yet when the horror hits, “The Cursed” connects with quick bites of carnage that accent the drama with realistic stakes that are more frightful than fantastical.
“The Cursed” will find an appreciative audience, to be sure. That audience won’t have a high membership rate, certainly not on par with the popularity of a more mainstream movie. But between the lush visual scope of the scenery (horses on fire!) and the substance in its story, “The Cursed” can still pimple susceptible skin with goosebumps.
Review Score: 65