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.

An interesting story overall and some neat ideas woven into it. Unfortunately cliche does take over and poor decisions (to say the least) of the main characters make this annoying to borderline unwatchable at times. It's a shame because it does look like you have a good cast, but even they struggle to make their choices seem believable.

Ellen Page has some gravitas to what she is doing, but even she falls victim to doing exactly what you predict any (wrong) thing the others are going to do too. By the way a man of the law showing up completely without any backup should really not be a thing anymore. This is beyond insulting to the viewer and ridiculous at best ...

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.

I enjoyed watching this movie very much and I can easily see myself watching it multiple times.

This is so much more than a zombie movie. To me it presented bigger questions about our own humanity and how we treat others. Even how some people who strive for power over others will manipulate and use others for their own goals.

The director and the cast did a great job and I loved how some of the back stories behind the main actors were explained if you took the time to watch the movie.