The Cursed
**Seen for the 2021 Sundance Film Festival. At the time, it went by the title “Eight for Silver.”
Sean Ellis puts us in the trenches of WWI before telling us his story of curses and bloody murder, and it’s quite a smart hook, actually. After seeing images of sanctioned horror from war, we are taken back in time to another display of sanctioned violence that will result in damnation and regret for one family. That’s just one of the things I really appreciated about “The Cursed,” among many others.
After the trenches, we go to the medical tents, and the doctors are trying to save one soldier by removing three bullets from his stomach. The doctor feels something else in there as he’s getting the third bullet, thinking it’s shrapnel; it turns out to be a fourth bullet, but not one they’re used to- it’s a silver bullet. It, and the soldier’s other affects, are sent to his sister and their guardian. The guardian pulls out a set of three similar bullets, and gives them to the woman- she is to be the lookout now. We then cut to 35 years prior, and witness the events that lead these characters to this point.
Usually, a horror film such as “The Cursed” ends up dealing with a conspiracy or hidden family secrets as the fulcrum of its narrative. I hinted at Ellis’s approach in the first paragraph; the “original sin,” as it were, that sets this film’s narrative in motion involves the destruction of a gypsy encampment on the grounds of Seamus Laurent (Alistair Petrie) and his family (including wife Isabelle, played by Kelly Reilly, and children Edward and Charlotte); the gypsies lay claim to the land, but Seamus owns it, so he and the elders take matters into their own hands, first with a half-hearted appeal, then with bloodshed. Ellis doesn’t go for a visceral approach in showing us the destruction, but in a wide shot that is even more effective in showing us the brutality of what they are doing. When we do get up close in the aftermath, a gypsy woman is buried alive with silver teeth in a box. The ghosts of the land call out to the children of the elders, and what they find will lay their parent’s sins out for the countryside to see.
Ellis’s film reminds me a lot of the great Hammer films, not just in the atmosphere they evoke but the way they treat the violence, and handles the responsibility people in the community have for the violence occurring. We have a pathologist (Boyd Holbrook) looking for gypsies who enters the picture early, and will become a key figure in the hunt for what the children unknowingly unleash. I love films with this type of atmosphere, but also beneficial is the way Ellis handles violence in the film; when there is violence, it’s brutal, but it’s sparingly used, making it more impactful when it happens. If you enjoy old school horror movies with a slow burn, and a sense of dread, to go with the monster movie thrills (and kudos on this one for a terrific monster design), I cannot recommend “The Cursed” enough.
You can read my interview with Sean Ellis here
