"A CURSED MAN" (2024) Misses The Mark On Making A Convincing Argument For Mysticism (REVIEW)
Even among die-hard horror fans, there is skepticism about anything truly supernatural in our reality. So much of the discourse centers around the subjectivity of personal experience, with things being influenced by bias or explained away by science. We also live in a time where facts are under attack from misinformation and people rely more on feeling when making important decisions. In other words, it’s just as easy to be a skeptic as it is a believer in our current era and it can lead to greater curiosity in how we can objectively prove things that previously have been elusive. Enter Director Liam Le Guillou and his documentary, “A Cursed Man” which seeks to prove the seemingly unprovable; are curses real?
WHAT’S IT ABOUT?
Filmmaker Liam Le Guillou embarks on a perilous journey into the occult to discover if magic truly exists, challenging his perceptions of reality and belief through a daring and unprecedented dark social experiment.
HOW IS IT?
Curses have been a staple of horror stories for much longer than any of us can remember, and the perception of what is and isn’t a curse can change based on region, religion, and more. “A Cursed Man” sets out to do something that skeptics would call impossible, and that is to demonstrate whether or not curses are real, and more broadly if the underlying beliefs that support them are to be taken seriously. To Guillou’s credit, it is an interesting topic to be sure, but unfortunately, the delivery leaves a lot to be desired while not answering the film’s core question. The film works far better as an exploration of how curses appear in different cultural contexts, but even that would be surface-level insights for a 97-minute film. What hampers the experience is that so much of what Guillous sets out to do is scientifically flawed thus leaving the viewer to get the sense that the answer is simply, “trust me, bro.”
Guillou starts his journey with a couple of witches in Los Angeles, claiming that LA is one of the best places to dabble in such arts. We aren’t inclined to disagree, but it doesn’t acknowledge that there are just as many false prophets as real ones, likely more who are simply grifting on people’s vulnerabilities like psychics have infamously done. Guillou is to be commended for treating his collaborators with respect and not diminishing their beliefs for the sake of entertainment, but he also does them no favors by not trying to legitimize them in some way either by reflecting on their experience or finding people who can corroborate their proclaimed expertise. Some of the folks featured have appeared in other documentaries as well as narrative films and the lack of established credibility hurts the overall reception of the film because the subject matter itself is rife with disbelief. Even Guillou himself claims to be a skeptic, but by the end seems to want to have his curse and eat it too. As Guillou travels from LA, to New Orleans and India to Mexico, not once are we given any sort of reasoning as to why these people are the ones who are in the know. It assumes that we will implicitly trust the filmmaker, but trust is earned and not a default when you’re trying to convince people to change their minds.
As Guillou goes around few want to curse him, until one does. From there, we are given no basis to assess if the curse is working or not, aside from Guillou’s own reported experience. This presents another problem around credibility as all hypotheses have to have some sort of criteria to determine success. The subjectivity of personal experience, especially considering the film is aimed at horror-loving folks like ourselves, isn’t enough to make a convincing argument as the filmmaker has a vested interest in putting on a show for the audience. Why would he not believe this since it is critical to the film being effective or not? The examples of experience he uses are full of holes as well. Such as his claim that a mountain biking accident could be from the curse, and he tells this to his committee of “experts” who all unsurprisingly jump to the conclusion that it’s a curse as opposed to the more practical explanation that off-road mountain biking is prone to injury. The same goes for nightmares Guillou experiences. Anyone who watches a lot of horror movies knows that they can inhabit your dreams, and the same can be said about surrounding one’s self with people talking about macabre mysticism. It stands to reason that your subconscious picks up on these ideas and then plays with them in your dreams, but it isn’t definitive proof that sudden nightmares are because of a recent curse. Again, Guillou wants us to take him and his experts seriously but doesn’t treat this like an experiment so much as a way to conjure up FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt).
THE GORY DETAILS
Directed By
Starring
Where can you watch it?
“A Cursed Man” is available NOW on PVOD platforms.
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