Movies
‘The Cured’ Art Reflects On That Time This Guy Was a Zombie
Ellen Page (Hard Candy, Flatliners) stars in the post-Zombie-era drama The Cured, which IFC Films acquired out of the Toronto International Film Festival. Now, they’ll release it in limited theaters and on VOD platforms February 23, 2018. Here’s a brand new piece of art that switches up a really cool moment in the film by having the “cured” reflect on his time as a zombie…
Our very own Joe Lipsett was at the premiere and wrote, “The Cured is social drama with horror undertones”:
“The Cured may not be the killer new zombie film that horror enthusiasts are thirsting for, but it clearly still has its brains.”
In Irish director David Freyne‘s directorial debut, “The film unfolds in the aftermath of a devastating virus which transformed the infected into zombie-like monsters. Mankind is struggling to rebuild societies deeply divided between the uninfected and those who did succumb to the virus and are still haunted by their violent actions. In the backdrop, the rise of a terrorist movement threatens to plunge the world into chaos again.”
Sam Keeley (Anthropoid, In the Heart of the Sea), Tom Vaughan-Lawlor (Avengers: Infinity War, The Infiltrator), and Paula Malcomson (The Hunger Games trilogy, “Ray Donovan”) also star.
The trailer for Ti West’s upcoming adaptation of A Christmas Carol raised a lot of eyebrows when it dropped earlier this week. While plenty of folks initially dismissed Ebenezer as a derivative project meant to cash in on the recent wave of unnecessary prequels that expand the backstory of beloved characters (such as 2023’s Wonka), Charles Dickens’ original novel already made a point of exploring Ebenezer Scrooge’s origins in detail – meaning that this new film is likely just a particularly faithful adaptation of the source material under a different name.
Couple that with the fact that the movie is being helmed by a genuine horror auteur and I think it’s safe to say that the latest iteration of the first modern ghost story is in good hands.
That being said, one detail that immediately jumped out at me during the brief teaser (other than a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it nod to Johnny Depp’s iconic bedroom death scene from the original A Nightmare on Elm Street) is the fact that many of Ebenezer’s ghosts appear to have been directly lifted from the iconic John Leech illustrations that accompanied the first edition of Dickens’ novel.
Here are a couple of stills from the trailer compared to the original artwork:
The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come in ‘Ebenezer’ and ‘A Christmas Carol’
The Phantoms in ‘A Christmas Carol’ and ‘Ebenezer’
Marley’s Ghost in ‘Ebenezer’ and ‘A Christmas Carol’
Mainly working with old-school wood and steel engravings that would later be transferred to print, Leech was instrumental in crafting the iconic look of history’s most influential phantoms – especially since Dickens is said to have been deeply involved with the creation of these so-called “comic illustrations.”
And since the novel is commonly said to have popularized spiritualism in Victorian England, much of the ghostly iconography that we still see in genre media to this very day (including some of Ti West’s previous films) can be traced back to the author’s partnership with Leech.
Ebenezer won’t be the first A Christmas Carol adaptation to borrow heavily from these designs, but I can appreciate how Ti West is incorporating an important part of horror history into his latest film.
Ebenezer will be available in theaters starting November 13.
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