THE ACCURSED, not to be confused with the identically named movie from 2021, tells the story of a young nurse who takes on a short-term job caring for a quasi-comatose old lady in a house out in nowhere, basically as a means of distracting herself from the recent suicide of her mother. Little does she know that she is being set up by demonic forces to give much more than her clinical services.
The prologue features some atmospheric cinematography which suggests a dark fantasy setting of the past even though it is actually set in the present. It also foreshadows the main problem with this movie: we can predict what will happen from a mile away. This is a major issue when the aim for much of the movie is to build creepy tension.
The story offers few innovations apart from the fact that all major characters are female. The acting varies, with the strongest performances coming from Meg Foster, Mena Suvari and Sarah Dumont. The visuals are nice but not enough to compensate for the lack of tension due to predictability.
I was going to write this off as a mediocre horror film, but unfortunately the film takes a nosedive in the last 15 minutes or so because the details of the course of events and especially the behavior of the characters, though running as predicted, become increasingly implausible. That is, implausibility is stacked on top of predictability. Unmotivated details like the face mask merely remind us that such horror gimmicks have been executed far more effectively in previous movies (For example, see the similar scene in DEVIL'S REJECTS (2005)).
Also, the impact of the climax is sabotaged by the fact that the cool horror idea with the demon hand coming out of the mouth was already shown in a couple of earlier scenes. In my opinion, it would have been more effective to save it up and also spend more time on showing the whole body transformation more slowly.
At any rate, the movie ends with what is meant to be a bang but left me curiously unmoved. I suspect the reason is that the demon's motivations at that point were not clear to me.
This was an uneven effort which fell short of its potential. A better script especially could have elevated this to a good horror film.
