Werewolf movies take place in either the present, or gothic past. The Cursed is one of those gothic past movies. Even though it’s not a fresh, new take on werewolf origins, the movie gets points for delivering exactly what its promising. Plus, if you like big estates and candlelit corridor walks, put on your finest evening wear and corset and head on out to the moving picture nickelodeon to catch this film on the big screen!
In 1800s England, a land baron, Seamus (Alistair Petrie) has a problem: Roma gypsies have laid a claim to a piece of his estate. So because this is the 1800s, he elects to slaughter the clan which solves his problem. However, the clan secretly has been protecting the town from a worse fate unbeknownst to Seamus, his wife Isabelle (Kelly Reilly), his kids (including Amelia Crouch), or the whole village. However, sinister dreams draw the village children to some creepy silver dentures. Someone gets bitten, and, well, you know where this is going. And so does John McBride (Boyd Holbrook), a pathologist who happens to arrive when things start to go awry.
The Cursed updates the werewolf lore a few centuries, but doesn’t mess around too much with the origins. The most intriguing idea is the Native American/Gypsy allegory: a group of greedy white settlers committing a genocide of a group for their own personal gain, and dealing with the consequences. Director Sean Ellis goes for brute force horror with the attack, showing the full ethnic cleansing in its cruel, vile, abhorrent gore. That gory intro follows through when the werewolf attacks begin, taking that same grotesque attack and flipping it onto a younger generation, paying for the mistakes of their parents. But those ideas fall away as the story moves forward, other than a clever religious allegory later in the film, opting for a jump scare/torture porn angle, that also grows in unintentional comedy because none of the characters are really interesting other than John McBride or Isabella. Not great for a movie that should scare the bejesus out of you.
The best thing The Cursed has going for it is the creepy atmosphere it sets up turning back the clock of time. Seamus’s estate is a foggy nightmare, slowly rolling in as night falls. The candlelight walks are also smart, it basically makes the shadow creep in on the actors, making the audience claustrophobic. The evening dinners are particularly bleak, sterile affairs. When it comes to the wolves, Ellis mostly applies the Jaws mentality to the creature, keeping it in the shadows or quick cuts, letting the visceral end result speak for itself. When it does start appearing the third act, at least the werewolves look fairly grotesque, with some really smart parasitic features that make me think of The Faculty or early xenomorphs in Alien. And at least when the movie almost falls apart by the end, Ellis at least goes “f*ck it” and gives us the gore fest he’d been promising since the early massacre.
Werewolf lore and British Society films should dictate if you want to see The Cursed. Could be better, could be worse. But here’s a lesson for the kids out there: if you find silver teethed dentures buried under a scarecrow of a crucified man, maybe don’t put them on for sh*ts and giggles. Just sayin.