(IMAGE: Screen Media)
A Screen Media Release, 2022. 96 minutes. Horror/Thriller
Grade: 3 out of 5
A curse is at the center of The Accursed — it happens in the prologue of this effective horror-thriller which, while walking a well-trod path for movies in the demons-and-witches genre, still manages to boil with toil and trouble. Bad news for its less fortunate characters but great for lovers of classic blood and gore.
After that prologue, where the curse is cast, we meet a young woman called Elly (Sarah Grey), who recently became a nurse and lost her estranged mother. That relationship will be relevant as mother-daughter sagas always are in movies of this sort. Theirs was difficult, to say the least. She’s asked by a family acquaintance, played with a dour countenance by Mena Suvari (American Beauty), to caretake an elderly woman, played by 80’shorror movie fixture Meg Foster (They Live), whose countenance is better seen than described. Elly takes the job against the wishes of her good friend Beth (Sarah Dumont), who notes the creepiness of the situation from the moment she drops Elly off at the remote cabin — in the woods — with no phone service. She literally says, “This is creepy as hell.” And she’s right.
While The Accursed is about who got cursed and why, the movie lives in more practical concerns, which includes a good many practical special effects of the sort the great Wes Craven might have employed in some of his early masterpieces; The Hills Have Eyes, Swamp Thing, A Nightmare on Elm Street. They are the reason those films still work to this day, and it’s a style that suits movies like those and The Accursed very well. There’s nothing like watching a decrepit hand crawl from the mouth of a human head when both the hand and the head are real. That, and like moments, make The Accursed a solid horror-thriller beyond the narrative, which may or may not cohere by the movie’s end. Then again, I’m still not sure what was going on in those Halloween films, and the Friday the 13th movies are a narrative mess. Who cares? No one, that’s who.
Director Kevin Lewis has likely seen many Wes Craven, Sam Rami, and Tobe Hooper films, and he plainly knows the genre. But he trained under filmmakers the likes of John McTiernan (Die Hard) and Renny Harlin (Die Hard 2 and Cliffhanger), so he knows how to make the elements that matter — matter the most. His creatures are in-the-room effects; whether it’s a performer in a well-designed scare suit or a mechanical apparatus that spews green pea soup, his set pieces are real, well-lit by DP David Newbert (Willy’s Wonderland), and believable. And he also knows how to get great performances out of his players. Everyone here is very good. Lewis’ Willy’s Wonderland (2021) revitalized Nick Cage’s career (again) and marked a breakout film for a mid-career director who seems to be finding his stride. He’s got a few horror films on cue, and like The Accursed, they all have elements of the practical in them, and they all look, to quote Beth from The Accursed, “…creepy as hell.”
Director: Kevin Lewis
Writer: Rob Kennedy
Producer: Marcus Englefield, George Lee, Kevin Lewis
Cast: Sarah Grey, Sarah Dumont, Alexis Knapp, Sherman Augustus, with Meg Foster and Mena Suvari
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