The Curse of Audrey Earnshaw (Fantasia Fest)
**Seen for the 2020 Fantasia International Film Festival.
When a movie feels like it is built from truly sinister impulses, you get a film like Thomas Robert Lee’s “The Curse of Audrey Earnshaw.” I’m not saying that is necessarily a bad thing for a horror film, and this one really leans into those impulses with a force that washes over us. It makes for an unpleasant watch, but it’s also completely engrossing, and is well worth a viewing for horror fans.
The film begins with title cards setting the stage- in the 19th Century, America began to see floods of Irishmen come to the country and settle. We will focus on one such community, which has maintained a sense of traditionalism over the century, not really modernizing as others have. They are struggling to survive, however, worried that God has abandoned them. One woman in this community is Agatha Earnshaw (Catherine Walker) whom, one night, gets pregnant during an unexpected lunar occurrence. She gives birth to Audrey (Jessica Reynolds), but she keeps Audrey out of the eye of the community because of what it might mean, as she was known not to have any suitors. In 1973, we catch up with the Earnshaws, and Agatha has seen an unexpectedly strong harvest compared to the rest of the community, and Audrey has stayed hidden…until now.
You can probably discern from that description of the plot what will happen, but what makes “The Curse of Audrey Earnshaw” so compelling is how Lee builds to this with showing, quietly, Audrey’s impact on the community. We see her first interactions with men like Colm Dwyer (Jared Abrahamson), whom has recently lost his son and Bernard Buckley (Don McKellar), whose interaction with Audrey on the road leaves him feeling…empty. We are shown early on whom Agatha and Audrey are, and that the community’s misfortunes are the result of their beliefs. One of the most interesting things about Lee’s film, however, is that we don’t really view Agatha, or Audrey, as a villain for that reason. It is clear that they are doing something supernatural to cause hardship, but the primary tension is how Agatha has hidden her daughter for so long, sheltering her from the community. We understand the reasons why, but by the end, we also see how things might have been different had Agatha allowed Audrey to live naturally. That this isn’t just a folk horror film a la “The Witch” is one of its greatest assets- “The Curse of Audrey Earnshaw” doesn’t set up any easy ideas of right and wrong, good and evil, and that’s why I like it so much.
