The Cured

The film itself is ok. It's a bit slow but picks up towards the end. Overall it's rather bland really.

But what I wanted to point out is that this is not a fresh idea. It's been done as a BBC mini series a few years back called "In the Flesh" and a film quite similar as well called "The Returned". And this iteration or spin is the less of the three.

If you are looking for a purely mindless crimson-sprayed gangrenous brain-gorging splatter-fest, The Cured is almost guaranteed to bore you to tears. Not that it is lacking its share of gore and heart-pounding zombie-runs, but this film is focused on the social and interpersonal dimensions of a post-infection world, rather than running for your life and mashing Zombie brains in order to keep your own grey matter off the menu. As a well-crafted tale about "othering", and the directed and broader impacts of the alienation of one group by a "well meaning" majority, this film, possibly unintentionally, delivers an almost perfect analogy for the impact to the broader gay community of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s and 90s. The film also maps successfully to the impact of demonising migrant, ethnic and religious groups (very possibly its intent, coming from Northern Ireland); take your resonant flavour of "othering" and insert here. A stark, brutal and effective expository. If you want to cook up extremists, this film delivers the recipe...

As an experimental vehicle for the fabulous Ellen Page, this film didn't get the exposure it deserved - Page once again proves both her versatility and her ability to believably breathe gritty appeal into the characters she inhabits. The other key cast were equally compelling, save maybe for Paula Malcomson, who maybe didn't receive the best treatment from the production - she felt atypically undercooked as Dr Lyons.

A must-see if you want some gore and splatter to go with a massage of your grey matter.

About 40 minutes passed and i was like "WTF, i gonna sleep here", the movie is slow, boring, isn't a good horror movie, and neither a good "zombie movie". Maybe it has some good acting, but... Oh, i almost forgot, the hand shaky camera sometimes is annoying too

I won't get into the allegorical aspects of how this movie ties zombies into the overall social aspect of, say, immigration or Northern Ireland.

This review is simply to recommend this movie as one that covers all its basis quite well. Acting is spot-on, good pacing, soundtrack isn't overwhelming or distracting.

For zombie fans, The Cured does advance this genre in how it looks at the horror from a different angle - that of the infected's perspective.

So this film is being touted as an 'original' take on the old zombie narrative, but the problem is that this has been done before and better with the superior tv drama 'In the flesh'.

When exploring these themes and ideas it really helps to have the kind of breathing space and ability to take risks that you just don't get in a 95 minute movie.

It's not a bad film, it's just annoying that it's being billed as something it is not. You'd kind of understand if it was a Hollywood take on things, but the writer and director is Irish, meaning that he'll be well aware of the tv drama content of the British Isles and has decided to basically rip it off shamelessly. This wouldn't be so bad if he'd improved upon things, but he really hasn't.

An alright film, passes the time, but do yourself a favour if you like the concept and watch the superior 2013 BBC television drama, 'In the Flesh.'