 | MOVIE DETAILS • Name: The Cured • Year: 2017 • Country: Ireland • Director: David Freyne • Main cast: Ellen Page, Tom Vaughan-Lawlor, Sam Keeley • Runtime: 95 minutes • Production company: Bac Films, Savage Productions, Tilted Pictures • TRAILER |
Do you wanna know what, in my modest opinion, is the biggest problem of The Cured? The filmmakers tried to bring the current chaotic political situation of nowadays, all the spreading hate flooding the streets worldwide, but still make an old school survival horror film. It is not a bad idea, it has been done before and sometimes with remarkable results, but this time they sank in between waters.
The start point is not bad though. A disease that turned people into zombies has been cured. The once-infected zombies are discriminated against by society and their own families, which causes social issues to arise. This leads to militant government interference. A crash of interests between the ones who are cured and want to get their old lives back, the ones who can’t cope with the memories of everything they did when they were zombies, a government who wants to eradicate the menace for good, and the people who always remained uninfected and won’t allow their cured fellow citizens to walk around in freedom.
The references of exclusion from sexual and racial matters are more than evident. In a moment where everybody has an opinion about the refugee’s drama and the limits of freedom, the idea of The Cured was a move easy to expect. The idea is not bad at all, it brings a good dose of drama, can build the characters strongly through their personal situations and backgrounds, and can create a conflict that taken into the right direction could become a quite entertaining and committed film. The problem is the filmmakers didn’t play their cards as well as we would have desired.
As mentioned before, the biggest problem of The Cured is that all the time stays on the surface of the story. The action is developed in a too cheesy and easy way, and that makes the audience lose their interest for the action. The trio of main actors formed by Ellen Page, Tom Vaughan-Lawlor and Sam Keeley bring intense performances proving implication in the project, but the direction drifted too much into self-indulgence. Cinematography, sound design and the decorations are also mild enough to not bring anything interesting enough for the audience to grab into and remain enthusiastic about the film.
The Cured is the first feature movie from director David Freyne, and is the long length adaptation of his short film The First Wave (2014). The idea was there, and it was good, but the project was too big for him.
RATE: 4/10
IMDB URL: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3463106
