Ropey reveals curse farmhouse frights
Co-directors’debut shows potential
We’ve all had a fallout with friends but it doesn’t normally end in us placing a deadly curse over their family’s head.
That’s the intriguing premise of horror flick The Accursed as Yancy Butler’s Hana tries to continue to suppress the 20-year supernatural hex threatening her bloodline as her son Petar (George Harrison Xanthis) returns home to get married.
Writers and directors Kathryn Michelle and Elizabeta Vidovic, making their full-length feature debuts, do well to set up an impending sense of dread and doom within a small farmhouse location.
The curse is initially spoken of and not seen, beyond some vines behaving strangely, and the predominately nighttime setting and dark colour tones weight heavily on the characters and audience.
The cast all contribute fine work too. The concern Butler’s Hana has for her loved ones oozes out of her every pore and Goran Visnjic displays restrained edginess and quiet hope as her husband Nikola.
Maiara Walsh’s Zara is a fireball of repressed frustration as she attempts to get to the bottom of her mysterious past and Izabela Vidovic becomes the focal point as Petar’s more-than-meetsthe-eye new bride Sunny.
The sisterly “clans” originating in the Balkans is also fresh ground for a horror movie and there are hints at interesting back stories and ancient powers.
Sadly, though, as the film progresses, Michelle and Vidovic veer down the seen-it-all-before possession route and a couple of plot twists make the story a bit hard to follow – and muddy the timeline.
Most of the kills take place off screen, partly to keep the identity of the master manipulator at play a secret, but that is such an obvious reveal it undermines much of the script’s darker turns.
The Accursed works best when Michelle and Vidovic build atmosphere through tales of legends, unseen spookiness in the dark and characters being unsure of who to trust.
The more the co-directors show, and try to build on their original idea, the more their debut movie suffers.
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Cathie Bryson said: “Give Stay Close on Netflix a go. It is really gripping TV.”