The Beast of Gevaudan, a mysterious event that occurred in France in the eighteenth century, has inspired another movie, “The Cursed” (2022), set in the late nineteenth century through World War I. When prejudiced wealthy landowners commit an atrocity to maintain the status quo, bad dreams plague everyone in the village until a group of children act on these visions thus unleashing an infectious evil to avenge the wrong.
“The Cursed” starts strong and has all the elements of an unsettling horror movie. The film is divided into three acts, and the first is the best as it establishes the root of the village’s problems. Writer and director Sean Ellis had moments of hitting Ari Aster levels of unblinking horror with long shots capturing the xenophobic inspired slaughter of a band of Romani. Ellis is British, and Brexit probably inspired that story line of hating the other who has as much of a claim on the land as those who hate them thus leading to the destruction of both. It is unflinching without being torture porn or exploitive. It also evokes the gleeful, celebratory mood of capturing lynching in the US with photographs to commemorate the act and a scarecrow with disturbing origins. It also pays homage to Sam Raimi’s style of horror without being campy. There is some wonderful implicit commentary on the unholy alliance in power between the church and the landowners, which does not get heavy-handed.
“The Cursed” is at its strongest when the story focuses on the have nots: the children of all classes, the lower-class adults, and the Romani. The real horror is that everyone knows that they are in danger, but they are isolated in their section of the hierarchy and only can discuss it amongst themselves. The upper classes have forbidden discussing the atrocity, and while no one knows precisely what happened, they each have a piece of the puzzle, but are forbidden from putting the pieces together to solve the problem, which makes it worse. The class dynamic is understated, but always in the backdrop even with the children who play with each other regardless of rank.
The second act is not a traditional werewolf story, which keeps the tension taut. It borrows Biblical elements from “Dracula 2000” (2000) as the origin of the curse, which I loved. If you are imagining the traditional werewolf look, erase it. Imagine if John Carpenter and David Cronenberg had a baby with a dash of “Alien: Resurrection” (1997). “The Cursed” gets points for reimagining a well-worn monster trope and changing enough of the rules to throw the viewers off their perch of knowledge. There is a subtle undercurrent of infection, an outbreak of cholera, to explain the lack of official intervention, but also to allow readers to connect the dots and draw their own parallels with infection and lycanthropy. The best scene in the final act is unspoken. This person is attacked, presumably knows the fate of the infected and does not want to lose her job so she hides her wounds. This development built on the class issues developed earlier in the film. Perhaps I am reading too much into something that is not there, but the idea of landowners having access to lower classes and being able to victimize them with impunity felt like a metaphor for werewolves except now there is a boomerang effect. During this scene, it felt as if the owner of the manor was too familiar with that area of the house. The film also borrows elements from vampire stories with the infected returning to their homes and infecting those closest to them.
So why does “The Cursed” not stick the landing? It punked out by changing focus and making the protagonist the Van Helsing character, i.e. pathologist John McBride (Boyd Holbrook), who has his own reasons for tracing the contagion and solving the problem. The film pulls punches and instead of being a film about class, religion, and xenophobia, it becomes a way for him to fix his trauma. Ultimately the film did not trust audiences to stay invested in a little girl, Charlotte (Amelia Crouch) dominating the film and went for the lazy choice by creating a white guy hero who can navigate all class levels and speak truth to power. It becomes a fantasy fulfillment for progressive dudes who imagine that they would act differently than their ancestors if put in the similar circumstances instead of aligning with the wealthy landowners and seeing them as aspirational or cower in fear and subjugation. McBride is fortunately more interesting than the last character whom I saw Holbrook playing, the protagonist in “The Predator” (2018), but it makes the movie fall into a rut, the supernatural detective movie. Before it was unpredictable with its ensemble cast and viewers being forced to switch allegiances as more likeable people die, but then he sucks the tension out of the film. He knows what is happening, has a plan and solves everything in a traditional fashion. Even though he faces some opposition from the establishment, it is superficial. Instead of being seen as an outsider and a threat, he is accepted in the establishment’s circle as the authority, which felt like a betrayal considering how the film introduces him. During the denouement, one-man questions why he survived and no one else, which could have elaborated on the theme of isolation and suspicion with xenophobia spreading to someone similar, but not a part of their village, but it gets dropped.
“The Cursed” also could have spent more time showing how more than one estate was affected. During an autopsy scene, that moment is evoked but not explored, and it was powerful because it could have introduced friction among the village’s powerful. It was a missed opportunity which reduced the conflict to one unhappy powerful family. Early in the film, the movie makes a point to make sure that the audience knows that the wife is scorching hot but now in a sexless marriage. I was a little concerned that she was just going to end up the pathologist’s love interest, but I found her role in the denouement underdeveloped. There was potential for her character to get elevated to mom in charge status as in “A Quiet Place” (2018), but it felt vaguely disappointing. You can be a mother, and that is it—common sense be damned unless the film was suggesting that she figured out something that the pathologist did not, which seemed unlikely.
I have seen one Sean Ellis film before, “The Broken” (2008), which explores doppelgängers so I was not surprised that the ending was lacking. Using World War I as bookends seemed extraneous though I know that it reveals what happened to a handful of characters and the rest of the cursed object (3 off the church floor and one retrieved from a body). The connection between World War I and the rest of the film seems tenuous though I suppose it implies a never-ending cycle of destruction that transcends curses, and the real horror is what men in power think is acceptable. It is not the kind of bleak ending that I want.
“The Cursed” is supposed to take place on the French countryside, but everyone has British accents, and there is only one French actor. I am not saying that I wanted the actors to fake French accents, but other than the origin of the story, did it have to be in France? Either hire more English-speaking French actors or change the location.
“The Cursed” is too long, pulls punches by lacking confidence in their less powerful characters and disappoints by failing to follow through with its dominant themes through the end. It is a visually beautiful film whose story does not live up to its atmosphere.
