The road to Halloween is paved with good films. Wherein we countdown to the spirited season with a hundred doses of horror. 30 days to go.
When it comes to the zombie apocalypse, the genre has seen it all. Ranging from horror to arthouse cinema to comedy, the plot usually unravels across deserted cities, a pack of survivors getting decimated by the minute and the escape to a safe haven. Irish director David Freyne, however, mixes the classic ingredients up in his feature debut The Cured, a sequel to the universe he first set up in his short The First Wave. Like others before him, he uses the premise to comment on societal problems and humanity itself, all while giving the basic construct a fresh new spin.
The film takes off where other movies usually end and dives into the problems that humanity would face after a zombie apocalypse. The world has found a cure for the run of the mill infection, the “maze virus”, and those affected by it have been healed. But their ordeal is far from over. Now they are facing the excruciating process of being reintegrated into Irish society. This task is burdened by the fact that the cured can remember their time as flesh-eating ghouls and are traumatised by the memories. Those unaffected by the virus remember as well and are filled with suspicion, unwilling to let the former predators become members of society again.
The plot follows cured Senan (Sam Keeley), who moves in with his sister-in-law Abbie (Ellen Page, also on producer duty) and her son while trying to give his life a new meaning. But this proves to be harder than anticipated. For starters, he can’t tell Abbie who is responsible for her husband’s death. To make things worse, he has to make first-hand experiences of the state’s brutality against those who are resistant to the cure and stuck in their zombie state.
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Abbie, who is trying to find a way back into her day-to-day life as well, is treated with hostility by her neighbours as she took in a cured. But unlike her and Senan, who are trying to continue with their lives, there are also the likes of Senan’s friend and former infected Connor (Tom Vaughan-Lawlor). Once a top lawyer, he now lives in a reception centre and works as a street sweeper. He and some like-minded cured cherish their former uninhibited brutality and won’t accept their classification as second-rate citizens. An uprising against the status quo is in the air and the threat of a new outbreak is only a matter of time.
Freyne not only sets the plot in his home country of Ireland, but he also establishes that it was hit the hardest in the global epidemic. This feeds seamlessly into the rich and often dramatic history of the country itself. Of course, the societal problems can be read as a comment on the refugee situation in western countries and people’s dismissal of those in need. “We can’t take anyone in anymore, it’s enough“, a TV anchor yells in face of the cured moving back into non-affected neighbourhoods. The words sound familiar. But even more so, the tensions mirror the societal cracks that have been interwoven into Irish history for centuries.
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As Connor’s radicalised gang terrorises the neighbourhood, throwing Molotov cocktails at houses, it’s hard not to draw parallels to the Troubles. The angry protesters and their prejudices, the anti-cured graffiti and the uncaring authorities evoke well-known images. But not only the more recent history is reflected in the setup. With a good part of the population having died or living in deprived conditions, the viewer can even see narrative elements of Ireland’s Great Famine trickling through.
Stylistically the movie almost entirely forgoes bloody shock moments and scare jumps. Gory scenarios are reserved for emphasising the trauma of the cured or for introducing new threads within the plot. Freyne is less interested in determining a villain, but in highlighting the fears of the post-zombie society and the question of how to deal with the “others”. The script doesn’t distinguish between good or bad amongst the divide but rather acknowledges the emotional and physical scares for both. After all, how easily can you reintegrate someone who has only recently savaged somebody dear to you?
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If the movie is to fault for something though, it is the somewhat cookie-cutter characterisation of Connor. With Vaughan-Lawlor handing in once again a daunting intense performance, the writing keeps him dangling between extremes rather than making him a product of his circumstances. Equally predictable is the thin line between good citizen and discriminated avenger that Senan keeps crossing whenever the story needs him to.
The final act, unfortunately, gets swamped up in a classic action set piece. It’s a no brainer that the virus would play a larger role again at a later point in the story. But less would have been more. The sombre tone of the movie slides into the well-known tedious territories of bloody street fights and hungry zombies staggering through the streets and lurking in dark corners. It ultimately gives the story a half-baked finishing touch.
Nonetheless, Freyne has delivered an impressively profound movie that doesn’t simply go by the motto “bigger, more brutal, more expensive”. Instead, it conveys a multi-layered message that lingers long until after the credits have rolled.
