FEBRUARY 20, 2022
GENRE: WEREWOLF
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REGULAR SCREENING)
The other day I tweeted about movies where it's very important that the "The" in the title is included, because sometimes it's the only difference between it and a much lesser movie. For example: THE Texas Chainsaw Massacre is a terrific film, whereas Texas Chainsaw Massacre is... not so much. Or THE Eclipse, a wonderful ghost drama (fans of Mike Flanagan's work should be tracking this one down) that should not be confused with Eclipse, aka Twilight 3. Well now we have The Cursed, which was originally titled Eight for Silver, but was changed to something that might get it mixed up with Cursed, the 2005 film technically directed by Wes Craven. And worse, both are werewolf movies! I sure would like to deliver a swift kick to the shins of whatever dumbass exec decided, out of all the words in the English language, to change their werewolf movie's title to one that's already been used by an unrelated, largely hated werewolf movie. Dumbass.
Anyway, THE Cursed is a pretty solid film that harkens back to Hammer style monster movies, which is a great idea for a modern horror movie because, as Hammer enthusiasts know, the studio only ever made one actual werewolf movie. So this kind of spiritually fills in a gap in their library, in a way? I mean it's too long (just under two hours), but on a narrative level it's got all the hallmarks of those old flicks: the local tavern of suspicious types, a curse, a gypsy camp, and - most importantly - lots and lots of fog. I don't think the actual sun appears more than once in the movie; it is consistently (beautifully) overcast and foggy throughout most of its runtime, and was even shot on film - I hope like hell I can see it on 35mm someday.
It's also got a pretty good hook for a werewolf story, in that the gypsies (note: their word, not mine - I know it's not the PC term) are actually keeping the werewolf curse at bay, but when the local landowners decide to chase them off their land (read: murder them all), the curse is set free, and the first victim is actually a young boy (son to the landowner himself), who can change others just as quickly as a vampire or zombie might add to their numbers. No, this doesn't result in dozens of wolves running around by the end, but instead allows a slight sense of mystery to the proceedings, as there are moments where we know *a* wolf has been put down or is elsewhere, but doesn't necessarily mean the other characters are safe wherever they are. Bonus: there's an evil scarecrow that pops up from time to time (albeit in dream sequences, though they are effectively done).
It also invokes the Beast of Gévaudan, the story best known here for inspiring Brotherhood of the Wolf. The film's hero, a pathologist named John McBride (Boyd Holbrook), lost his family to the Beast and has been tracking it ever since, ending up in this out of the way locale. The landowner, Seamus (Alistair Petrie) and his wife Isabelle (Kelly Reilly) believe their son to be missing, perhaps taken by the beast - neither they nor McBride are aware that he has become the beast himself. It's the rare instance of being ahead of the characters actually working in the movie's favor; if they all knew the kid had become a monster, they'd be doing dumb things to protect it when the chance arose to kill it. Instead we get to feel Isabelle's untainted grief, so we're also hoping that maybe a cure can be found without constantly rolling our eyes at their "stupid" actions.
There is also a surprising amount of gore, even on a child; an early victim is seen having his arm torn apart and later we're given more than a quick look at his maggoty corpse, the sort of thing we have gotten used to filmmakers avoiding (especially for a film that ended up showing next to Spider-Man at the multiplexes). It's possible that there are other gnarly gags, but unfortunately the director and editors make a terrible call and employ what looks like a broken projector effect over nearly all of the attack scenes. Some have said this was to hide some bad CGI and/or practical FX (apparently the film didn't just get a new title since it debuted at Sundance over a year ago - it was also reworked a bit), but I'd rather just look at an abysmal rendering/see the zipper on the monster suit than see anything presented like this, where the image gets doubled and shifted around so you can't really focus on what is happening.
The effect is even worse when you consider the masterful early scene where the gypsies are massacred by the landowners' mob. It's presented in one wide master shot that runs probably two minutes or more, as the mob rides up, has some words with some kind of town elder, shoot him and then proceed to torch their tents/wagons and shoot/slay the rest of the group. It's the sort of thing that is not only impressive to watch, but also to consider how much careful planning it had to have taken to execute properly; if something went wrong, they'd have to reset everything and start all over. I know those epic long shots that find their way into a lot of movies over the past few years are also difficult, but it's also easy to hide a cut somewhere (someone going through a door or passing a black/blank wall) - here, with something like forty people moving around fire, horses, etc, it seems like it'd be impossible to combine takes. And even if so, that's the actual magic of movies working on me again, after 20-30 years of just assuming they used a computer effect to pull something off!
Besides the dumb "glitch effect", the only other issue I had with the movie is a pair of wraparounds set during WWI (the bulk of the movie is set in the late 19th century). The first one is fine enough, but the return to it at the end, in order to sell a twist of sorts, felt very rushed and incomplete, as if there was supposed to be more to it and it got cut short (I don't want to spoil the particulars, but if you've seen it: after the _____ was removed, shouldn't that character... do the thing?). There's also a cursed character who is shot with the appropriate silver bullet and is cured - which I THINK is due to where the bullet was beforehand, but again it's not particularly clear. It was one of those things where I looked at my watch and knew how many minutes were left in the movie, thinking "How can they possibly wrap everything up in the bookend story with x number of minutes left?" only to then discover that, you know, they couldn't.
Alas I don't think I know anyone who saw it at Sundance, so unless a restored version comes to Blu-ray (or someone from Sundance wrote a particularly spoilery review) I won't know if this was always the case or if it was hacked down a bit to get it under two hours. Luckily, it wasn't enough to kill the movie for me - just a blemish on what was otherwise a welcome return to slower paced horror that wasn't "elevated". The A24 version of this movie would have the first (only?) wolf appear in the final 20 minutes at best, and replace all current shots of people on fire or dreaming of freaky ass scarecrows with more shots of people quietly eating dinner. It was invoking a kind of movie that wasn't roller coaster paced itself, but still delivering the goods at an even clip (also, the wolf design, while unusual, is pretty good). Hell even I stayed awake for the whole thing, and I was tired when I arrived at the theater (I didn't get an afternoon nap in as I hoped). That's gotta mean something, right?
What say you?
P.S. Part of the silver stuff invokes Judas' silver, specifically, which makes the title change to one of Wes Craven's movies even more amusing, as Dracula 2000 (which he produced) proposed that Dracula's fear of silver was due to the fact that he was in fact, Judas himself.
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