So you've decided to write and direct your own cinematic adaptation of William Shakespeare's 'Macbeth.' While retaining The Bard's verses, or at least some of them, you've decided to set your version in the modern twenty-first century world, with ping-ponging echoes of post-apocalyptic violence, urban warfare, and also mob movies. You also lean heavily on a poem written in 1919. You also weave in considerable amounts of brusque, grandiose, and/or sometimes jerky editing and visual effects that are sometimes employed best in horror films, but in more recent years have been employed more in the most false and empty of ways by The Asylum - or even worse contemporaries, like Uncork'd Entertainment - and despite some of the vibes you irregularly try to instill, you are not making a horror film. Unfortunately for you, your writing and your direction are so limp that too many scenes feel pointedly flaccid,, or alternatively woefully, outrageous overcooked, and betray the inauthenticity alongside the bare-faced production values. Why, your writing and direction are so limp that many times, even when a scene doesn't skip past those verses judged in your iteration to be inessential, they are treated so poorly that one could be forgiven for thinking that you had just blown past them altogether anyway. With all due respect, Angus Macfadyen, if indeed any is deserved: what were you doing here?
The thing about staging or adapting 'Macbeth,' probably more than any other work of Shakespeare, is that the material is so well known that it becomes a double-edged sword. The advantage as a filmmaker is that the ideas for the characters, scenes, and story are already there, and one needs only to shape them according to their vision; if one chooses to employ the four hundred year old verses, those are there for the taking, too. (If one is retaining the period setting there are additional advantages to claim; Macfadyen has declined these, so we'll speak no more of them.) The disadvantage as a filmmaker is that the audience already knows the material, too, so it will need some special factors to stand out above other versions - and for as tried and true and beloved as 'Macbeth' is, we'll also be more likely to zero in on any faults in a new version. Regrettably, in this instance, I'm having a hard time coming up with a list of elements in 'Curse of the Macbeths' that don't fall in the category of faults. Despite the filmmaker's questionable direction Taylor Roberts' wonderfully passionate performance as Lady Macbeth is surely an example of the value this does offer, or at least could have. As to the rest, well, I tried very hard to find admirable qualities. I tried.
The core narrative is here, somewhere - as far as I can tell - but it's hidden by wild, dubious, quizzical scene writing and sequencing that chops up the tale into a flummoxing, disjointed, genuinely confusing enigma. Some moments herein are so bewildering that I truly, genuinely don't know what Macfadyen was trying to do. There are some good ideas in the music that's used here (only some), but the music nevertheless constantly seems ill-fitting for any given scene. The filmmaker commonly toys with color and grayscale cinematography, with curious choices in the hair and makeup, and even with post-production color correction, and all in ways that are confounding in the first place, and seemingly inconsistent or even random in the second place. Despite some notable credits to his name as an actor, I would say that Macfadyen himself demonstrates such flagrantly poor, perplexing "acting skills" that he all by himself sinks this flick with his inconstant, unreliable, pretentious swagger: coming off at some points like Nicolas Cage at his worst instances of overacting and chewing scenery (e.g., "The bees! No, not the bees!"), at other points with outrageous airiness recalling Marlon Brando in 1996's 'The island of Dr. Moreau' (which as we all know was obviously Brando's finest hour), and at still other points with a simple-minded juvenile bent that we might expect from Dana Carvey, Martin Short, or Chris Farley in a 90s comedy, but not in an adaptation of 'Macbeth.' I WOULD say that all this falls on Macfadyen himself as an actor, and that's true in some measure; however, for as laughably bad and highly variable as his performance is, under his direction, almost the entire rest of his cast come off just as poorly. I ask again: Macfadyen, what were you doing here?
Then there's the fact that the vast preponderance of these eighty-two minutes are set strictly within the confines of a stretch limousine. I think that setting was supposed to mean something, but what it feels like instead is that Macfadyen couldn't secure financing for any other filming location or set, and he rushed to reshape a haphazard screenplay to somehow fit within those comfy seats. Then there are the fake magazine covers that are flashed before our eyes, an inclusion I absolutely do not understand. There are also those times when Macfadyen further toys with the audio in the same way that he does the image. Meanwhile, I said that Roberts, as Lady Macbeth, gave a passionate performance, and I mean it; she is to be commended for solid acting that, upon further reflection, is without a doubt the best aspect of 'Curse of the Macbeths,' and probably its sole virtue. However, even she can't escape the same vortex that consumes all else here: Macfadyen comes off worst, as an actor, and under his outrageous direction the rest of the cast isn't far behind. For the strength of her skills Roberts looks and sounds best, and most earnest, but there are moments when even she struggles to break through the forcefully stupefying miasma of the filmmaker's guidance.
'Macbeth' is, or should be, a dark, violent spectacle of prophecy, ambition, conspiracy, murder, and madness, characterized by fraught emotions. After opening scenes that raise a skeptical eyebrow, 'Curse of the Macbeth' gets significantly worse as it goes on, in every capacity, and is instead a baffling spectacle of nonsensical writing, egregiously awful direction, terrible acting, and hopelessly ill-considered craftsmanship. There may have been one or two scattered, workable ideas in Macfadyen's revision, but "one or two scattered, workable ideas" can't begin to salvage something as extraordinarily rotten as this. When you get down to it the best thing that can actually be said about this 2022 nightmare is that it's only eighty-two minutes long, and I suppose we can at least be thankful that Macfadyen wasn't more comprehensive in his interpretation of the play. Please, please take it from someone who sat to watch with no foreknowledge and the purest of intentions: this is abhorrent. It is abominable. There's not a doubt in my mind that it's one of the worst pictures I've ever seen, and it is so far - above all else - the worst cinematic adaptation I've ever seen of the Scottish play. Whatever it is you think you might get out of this, please look elsewhere. Don't waste your time like I did.
