The Cursed

Gypsies good, White Christians not so good. Pretty graphic & gory also, if that's you're thing.

This is a film that has some really wonderfully novel ideas and blends them with a lot of the tropes of a standard werewolf film, and then doesn't manage to put any of it into a particularly compelling film. I think it's a real shame because it's a gorgeous film and the novel way in which it treats werewolves (very loosely) is intriguing, but I also thought it's an extraordinarily poorly paced film to the point of almost being comically slow.

I’ll give it props for trying to channel a type of horror we don’t really get anymore but it’s kinda boring.

The Cursed is by no means a piece of hackwork, which actually makes its failures cut deeper. Ellis is a fine stylist who’s building his genre film on a conceptually sturdy foundation, using werewolf legend as a means to address the evils of colonialist land-grabs and the blowback that can result from it. But around the halfway mark, the grisly action takes over and The Cursed turns into a more familiar, forgettable battle for survival against creatures of the night.

Easy to see why certain kinds of people (critics & horror fans looking for something at least superficially different) praised this: it's basically a wolfman story told for PBS Masterpiece. The acting and cinematography are Oscar worthy, but it plays as pretentious bc the writing's often dull. It attempts pseudo profundity by name checking Jesus' 30 pieces of silver, but the betrayal link doesn't really fit. There are also evil white colonialists which Woke-minded critics can't get enough of

okay movie

If only its werewolves weren't hairless like squids (as if they were borrowed from the 2005 movie "The Descent"), The Cursed could have been a perfect horror flick. Its outdoor cinematography is superb--I like it so much; its musical scoring great; its pacing just right. These elements fit the era when the events were supposed to happen. MY SCORING: 99-96=Great; 95-90=Very good; 89-85=Good; 84-80=So-so; 79-70=Boring; Below 70=Forget it.

Some really nice things going on here and there -- the practical, make-up effects, the mythology -- but it's just too bad it lacks a proper vision and lousy pacing doesn't help, specially in the first half. Still one of the better werewolf films we've got in recent years.

Loads of things to like but doesn't quite work as a whole

Decent werewolf movie

A nice idea for a werewolf film. Terrible execution. Terrible acting, atrocious pacing, so bad in fact that I had to rewind to understand what characters were which and what year they were in due to the confusing flashbacks. There were entire scenes that served no purpose other than to be filler and to make you "think". The ending of the film genuinely insulted me, complete waste of my time.

A plot cursed by a lack of great ideas results in a generic film elevated by atmosphere and production value.

Boring movie. It’s better acted than a typical monster horror. Just is not anything special… C-

Kind of confuses plodding along for building atmosphere and tension. Not bad tho