Stars of 'The Cursed', Boyd Holbrook and Alistair Petrie Talk Horror, Sean Ellis, and Friendship
Alistair Petrie in THE CURSED.
“You will all pay for the sins made by our elders.”
Set against the gloomy backdrop of 19th-century France, the latest film from writer/director Sean Ellis finds itself at a crossroads between a period drama and a paranormal thriller in his new film, ‘The Cursed’. First premiering at last year’s acclaimed Sundance Film Festival under then-title ‘Eight for Silver’, the film follows a group of people whose small village is facing supernatural phenomena following the brutal slaughtering of a clan at the hands of land baron Seamus Laurent (Alistair Petrie). The baron’s son begins having nightmares regarding the slaughter and soon goes missing. As the hunt for his son begins, other children and townspeople begin to turn up dead, and gruesomely so. Enter in a visiting pathologist named John McBride (Boyd Holbrook) who is brought in to investigate the cause of these mysterious deaths. While at first it is suspected to be from the attacks of a wild animal, McBride begins to realize that there’s something much more sinister going on beneath the surface.
Petrie and Holbrook both signed on for the film just simply at the sight of Ellis’ name. “What got me into this film was working with Sean Ellis,” Holbrook says. Having been a fan of his since he saw Ellis’ 2016 WWII drama, ‘Anthropoid’, he met with him and began working on the character almost immediately by trading voice memos back and forth to start developing the dialect for John McBride. “The name Sean Ellis,” Petrie echoes when asked what interested him about this project. He had a similar experience to Holbrook in that he had seen one of Ellis’ earlier films, ‘Metro Manila’, and was blown away by it. “When the script arrived, it said, ‘Written and to be directed by Sean Ellis’ and it kind of had me at that, really,” he continues. “It was almost that straightforward because you always seek out filmmakers you'd love to work with, and when that name came across my desk, I was immediately intrigued.”
Boyd Holbrook in THE CURSED.
The actors mutually praise Ellis for his collaboration and for fostering an imaginative and creative environment on set. They shot exclusively on location with no studio time or sound stages, and Ellis used as many in-camera practical effects as possible to help the scenes feel more realistic to the actors as they shot them. “On ‘The predator’ for example, we had a lot of tennis balls in the air, and I think at the end of the day, you can feel that . . . and it was really important for Sean and everybody else . . . that we have practicals in camera [so you] actually have some sort of relationship to what you're working with rather than some dancing, fuzzy ball,” Holbrook laughs. The tennis balls in mention are in reference to a method used on set when heavy CGI is going to be involved. One search on the internet can lead to many amusing photos of actors in motion capture suits staring intensely at a tennis ball attached to a stick on top of another actor’s head that stands in place of where the CGI face will ultimately be. “Audiences are now so incredibly savvy, as they should be,” Petrie adds. “There’s a history of when certain visual effects or the ability to do certain visual effects arrive. Filmmakers can suddenly go absolutely berserk and use as many as possible. But again, an audience is the final arbiter, and they will go, ‘I don't buy that. I don't believe that.’ And so I think, after we premiered at Sundance, there was a happy realization that the power of in-camera effects, specifically working in the horror genre, are really worth it.”
“As an actor, I’ve always been determined [to] never to stop learning and inevitably you learn from other human beings . . . and I’ve learned a lot from Sean.”
Alistair Petrie in THE CURSED.
While the film successfully works as a slow-burning psychological thriller, there are plenty of tense moments to fill the audience with suspense as the details of the story unfold. The performances from the actors are strong yet brooding, and in contrast the scenes involving violence are quite gruesome and difficult, at times, to watch. How, then, when working under such intense conditions on set, do the actors manage to enjoy themselves and find a positive takeaway? The two again credit Ellis and each other. “You can be a great actor, but if you can improve technically and [learn] how to work with the camera, then it actually enhances the film and I think that’s something that Sean instilled in me throughout this process,” Holbrook notes. “Do you know what? I’ll tell you what it is. It's the human beings that you work with. Genuinely. Because it is such an intimate working experience and it's fast intimacy because it has to be, and that's not just your fellow actors . . . it's you, it’s the human beings that you work with, and what you learned from them . . . I learned very early on in my career from some really wonderful people about how to be on a working environment, how to really professionally collaborate, how to listen, as well, which is one of the key things that actors must do. So I would say that the main takeaway is obviously friendships,” Petrie concludes.