Butler's Cinema Scene

Sam Keeley

“THE CURED” My rating: C+

95 minutes | MPAA rating: R

The new Holy Grail — at least as far as the makers of horror films are concerned — is a fresh take on zombies.

In recent years titles like “Maggie,” “Life After Beth,” “The Girl with All the Gifts” and “Warm Bodies” have sought with varying degrees of success to refresh the whole undead flesheater bit.

“The Cured” offers some intriguing ideas, but can’t sustain the drama when things fall back into the same-old same-old.

At the heart of David Freyne’s Ireland-lensed effort is the idea that zombies can be cured.  Whether or not that’s a good thing is basically what the movie’s about.

Months before the beginning of the film a bug called the Maze Virus swept Europe, turning everyday folks into snarling cannibals.  A vaccine has been developed that brings the infected back to their normal state…with the downside that they can recall all the ghastly things they did while under the virus’ influence.

Ellen Page

About three-quarters of the infected have been cured.  Another 25 percent have proven immune to the therapy and remain in their depraved state.  The government is making plans for the “humane elimination” of these unfortunates, who are held in special prisons. Curiously enough, they may be better off then their cured fellows.

Because being cured is no walk in the park.  The film’s protagonist, Senan (Sam Keeley),  has just been reintroduced into society after receiving a clean bill of health. But he and his fellow recovered zombies are outcasts, assigned to halfway houses and sadistic “parole” officers and given crappy manual labor jobs. Worse, they are treated as pariahs, mistrusted and reviled for the killing they did while under the influence.

Senan has it better than most. He’s permitted to live with his widowed sister-in-law Abbie (Ellen Page) and her young son Cillian (Oscar Nolan). But he also recalls killing and munching on his brother, an incident he keeps to himself.  The guilt is eating away at him.

Other “cured” individuals are seething under the restrictions placed upon them; they’re dabbling in violent rebellion. Senan’s buddy  Conor (Tom Vaughan-Lawlor), a former barrister now reduced to custodial work, is waging a terrorist campaign to force society to give the cured their due. (BTW: The zombies never attack the cured, whom they instinctively regard as kindred spirits.)

A subplot involves a research physician (Paula Malcolmson) for whom Senan does grunt work. She’s desperately working to improve the serum so that captive zombies can be saved.  Her main test subject is her former lover, a voracious snarler perennially strapped to a gurney.

Zombie movies usually offer guilt-free escapism (you can kill zombies with impunity because, like, they’re already dead), but “The Cured” is awash in angst. It’s well acted…but it’s not much fun.

Not even a last-reel apocalypse — the shuffling undead are freed by terrorists and go on a rampage — can do much to brighten things this glum downer.

| Robert W. Butler