#550: The Cursed
Finally, a mediocre werewolf movie instead of a bad one
Initial release: January 30, 2021
Director: Sean Ellis
Werewolf movies, almost as a rule, just aren’t very good. Universal Studios’ iconic The Wolf Man (1941) was a decent showing, but it seems that over the next eight decades almost nobody’s ever gotten it right since. The 2002 cult classic Dog Soldiers is one of the rare exceptions (and not just because we get to watch a blackout drunk Sean Pertwee get punched in the face) but it’s the kind of exception that proves the rule. And, unfortunately for Anthropoid director Sean Ellis, The Cursed is full of promise that it can’t live up to.
Even the name is an indicator of how disappointing the film is; its working title was the far more evocative Eight for Silver (derived from a nursery rhyme recited by some kids in the movie) but for whatever reason was changed between its Sundance showing and its theater release. It’s the kind of bait-and-switch that exemplifies this film.
The premise is pretty simple: when the local landowners in rural 19th century France slaughter a group of Romani people (who had a legal claim to the land they were on, which was ignored,) the woman leading leaves behind a cursed set of silver teeth. When it’s discovered by the local kids, they unleash a particularly savage variety of werewolf that isn’t bound to the phases of the moon or even the time of day. The resulting carnage scares the hell out of the locals, and when a traveling pathologist with a mysterious past happens to stop by, he gets recruited to fight a disease he’s quite familiar with.
Making explicit reference to the legendary Beast of Gévaudan (a real-life werewolf panic which our doctor hero claims to have been present for, despite it happening over a century prior) the film makes an attempt to tie its events to the tale of the beast via the silver teeth, which themselves are implied to be formed from the 30 pieces of silver that Judas sold out Jesus for. And as for where the Romani fit in — because this film follows a lot of the old Romani curse tropes — it’s implied that the curse didn’t actually originate with them, but went dormant and the Romani were merely its caretakers before unleashing it on the cruel landowners. Of course, none of this makes any sense; it’s abject raving hooey, and even if we accept the premise at face value, trying to make sense of the timeline would drive you mad.
The Cursed is overall not as aggressively frustrating as, say, Brotherhood of the Wolf, that cult film from about 20 years ago about the Beast of Gévaudan, but that doesn’t make it good. While it’s long on atmosphere, and tries to do something halfway original with the usual werewolf “rules” (it’s revealed during an autopsy scene that werewolf victims are actually encased within their werewolf bodies, but are completely feral and mindless,) it still retreads a lot of the same old ground. Ultimately it’s a thoroughly middling film; the best I can say for it is that in a world of 2/10 werewolf movies, a 5/10 ain’t bad. It’s got a lot of nice gothic visuals with its fancy manor house and foggy forests, but it overall just lacks bite.
