Werewolves of London (well, France that sounds like London)

I am as passionate about the belief that we should have more historical horror as I am that we should have less werewolf movies. 

This makes The Cursed an even draw. 

Quick Plot: A World War I prelude introduces us to a French captain in the trenches. His injuries land him in a medical tent where a doctor extracts a few German bullets...and one silver.

Back in time we go! It's now 1881, and a colony of awful French(?) men with British accents are trying to take over land occupied by the Romani. With their supposedly generous financial offer rejected, they fall to plan B: full-out massacre, along with a public crucifixion and live burial of the tribe's leaders.

It's a genuinely horrific sequence, one that puts us in the audience firmly on the side of whatever monster will be unleashed by the dying words of an elder covered in dirt.

Unfortunately, I don't think the movie quite understood that. 

Written and directed by Sean Ellis, The Cursed is a handsome film that has an appealing grandeur to its style. It's filled with sprawling country estates and candlelit mansions, and occasionally, fairly disappointing CGI werewolf creatures that feel better placed in an Underworld universe. 

Yes, we know my lifelong ambivalence around lycanthropy on film (it just always looks silly). The design of The Cursed's creatures is actually fine, though every time they have to move, the gothic undertones are pretty much undone by 21st century graphics. 

Ultimately, that wasn't my issue with The Cursed. The film starts incredibly strong. The sequences of violence are not only brutal to watch, but succeed in laying such inarguable groundwork of who our villains in this story will be. Yes, it's awful that these men's actions will haunt their innocent children, but considering we just watched them murder a whole village, the price seems sadly reasonable. 

There could have been a fascinating tale to tell in exploring the morality here. Instead, The Cursed brings in what I guess is a leading man (Boyd Holbrook's John McBride) to come in and try to save the children. McBride had his own dark history with the Romani werewolves, having lost his wife and daughter to their curse some years earlier. So...I guess we're supposed to be back on team WASP?

At 111 minutes, The Cursed suffers from its second half pacing. Had it maintained its focus on the children or allowed anyone to discover and reconcile with just WHY their fathers brought such horrors upon them, it could have been something challenging and special. Instead, it seems to just turn its back on the instigating crime and hedge its bets on a handsome, bland werewolf hunter with zero charisma. 

High Points

The early sequences where we see the settlement's children experience collective Nightmare On Elm Street-like dreams packs some unsettling scares

Low Points

...which unfortunately sets us up for a major disappointment when the children get pushed to the background and we're left with unlikable or dull adults as our stars

Lessons Learned

Any girl who has brothers should know to never keep a diary

Women wore a lot of eyeliner in the late nineteenth century

Just when you thought the Victorian era couldn't get any worse, it doubles down: to be a good house guest, one must listen to your host's teenage teenager struggle for high notes she can't reach

Rent/Bury/Buy

The Cursed has generally positive reviews, and it's hard to call it a bad movie based on the production values alone (especially considering the last thing I watched was narrated by Billy Blanks). That being said, a near-two hour movie that fizzles after 45 minutes is hard for me to recommend. If you're curious, find it on Netflix.