92 Time February 28/March 7, 2022
TIME OFF MOVIES
The werewolf movie may be a horror sTaple, buT
the sad reality is that compared with vampires, our furry,
fanged friends lag in popularity by a moonlit country mile.
Werewolves don’t ignite the erotic imagination like vam-
pires do; voraciousness isn’t as sexy as neck-biting.
But there’s still poetry to be found in the idea of doomed
beings stuck in a cycle of perpetual hunger. The Cursed,
written and directed by English filmmaker Sean Ellis,
isn’t a werewolf picture in the strict sense: there’s noth-
ing shaggy or wolflike about the beasts in question. But
they are, as the title suggests, beings brought to life by a
deadly bite, their unearthly cravings an affliction foisted
upon them by an unnamed ancient spirit. Set somewhere
in 19th century France, this is a movie low on cheap jump
scares and high on atmosphere; its polished gloominess is
one of its chief attributes, situating you in a time and place
where you don’t feel quite right in your own skin.
The trouble starts when wealthy landowner Seamus
Laurent (Alistair Petrie) rounds up a bunch of thugs to
murder a group of Romani families who claim his land re-
ally belongs to them. The goons notice that the elderly
Roma matriarch (Pascale Becouze) has in her possession
a set of silver false teeth, each sharp little spike marked
with a cross; they decide the things are too scary to seize
and melt down. Before they kill and bury the old woman,
she hisses a warning: “We will poison your sleep until you
summon the dark one. Then you will know what death is.”
And before you know it, Laurent’s
children —sweet-natured Edward
(Max Mackintosh) and his protec-
tive older sister Charlotte (Amelia
Crouch)—begin having nightmares.
They dream of a human scarecrow, by
far the movie’s most horrifying image,
and of that set of silver choppers. It’s
only a matter of time before Edward,
Charlotte, and the other kids of the
village make their way to the site of
the massacre, where the old woman’s
curse takes its full, grisly effect.The Cursed is your classic caution-
ary tale about the price of greed and
bigotry, and less an allegory about the
unruliness of nature. Still, in most
werewolf lore it seems that young
people—like poor, sweet Edward
Laurent—are more susceptible to
mystical wolf power than adults are.
Werewolfdom is sometimes a mani-
festation of adolescent confusion, of
bodily changes that are bewildering
and scary. That’s how we got movies
like the 1957 teenybopper fave I Was
a Teenage Werewolf, and it’s a factor
in the Twilight movies as well: Taylor
Lautner’s Jacob Black is the werewolf
boy that Kristen Stewart’s Bella Swan
just can’t resist. Then there’s John
Fawcett’s brilliant 2000 Ginger Snaps,
in which a goth teenager is attacked—
and transformed—by a wild beast on
the same day she starts menstruating.
The movie’s tagline, “They don’t call it
the curse for nothing,” says it all.
The werewolves of The Cursed
are different: they carry the weight
of history, and of discrimination, on
their hunched shoulders. At one point
before her death, the Roma grande
dame explains the bargain she and her
people have made with the beastly
spirit behind the curse in question:
“We have protected it for genera-
tions, and it has protected our genera-
tions.” There’s nothing cuddly about
the were-creatures of The Cursed. But
there’s no question that they get the
job done. ◁
Werewolves
terrorize an 1800s
French townREVIEW
Where is the love for
the lowly werewolf?
BY STEPHANIE ZACHAREK
The
Cursed
is your
classic
cautionary
tale about
the price
of greed
and
bigotry