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The Cured has an interesting premise in that, after a zombie outbreak, someone managed to cure a number of them, so they can rejoin the rest of society… but are they REALLY cured? What do you think?! After all, why else would they make such a film?
75% are deemed fine, including Abbie’s (Ellen Page) brother-in-law, Senan (Sam Keeley), but there’s still an issue with the other 25% (for those who missed maths class), known as the Resistant, but either way, in this world, you can still be part of the undead AND a productive member of society as they’ll give you a job.
The virus which infected this lot is known as the Maze virus and, coincidentally, Tom Vaughan-Lawlor stars as one of the lead zombies, Conor, and he also took the lead in Maze, about the break-out from that prison. Michael Schofield eat your heart out… or let this lot do it for you.
There are many decent zombie movies out there, but this is not one of them. It relies all too often on ridiculous jump-scares, such as when someone is attacked by a zombie that’s going deadly-fast, but made zero sound before that split-second when they appeared on camera. Ugh, pur-lease!
Occasionally, it tries to throw tension in there, but it never works. Anything decent happens just off-camera and, at times, I keep expecting this to go down the comedy route, a la Shaun of the Dead, but no, it’s being dead serious! (pun not intended)
As an aside, for those who are 0% zombie, and yet work with the Resistant, NO amount of danger money would be worth that in real life!
The real question is: Can a *career* cure be found for Ellen Page, who starred in the godawful remake of Flatliners?
There’s still a couple of trailers for other films before the main menu appears, as if we’re still in the age of rental video. This keeps happening on discs from a lot of studios. I keep saying it. I still hate it. I wish they’d stop. They never listen. Etc.
The film is presented in the original 2.35:1 theatrical ratio and in anamorphic widescreen, and like most DVDs – which is why I stick to Blu-rays where released – the picture is very soft, indeed, if you’re used to a HD picture.
The audio is in Dolby Digital 5.1, not that you’d really realise, since it’s either silence with talking, or lots of gnarling sounds from the zombies.
I also can’t believe this is an Arrow release. Their titles are usually stuffed with extras. This disc only has one: a featurette (6:08), which is a bog-standard piece with clips from the film mixed with soundbites from the cast and crew, and the kind of filler Sky uses inbetween films.
There’s a bog-standard 12 chapters and subtitles are in English. It’s all very bare bones.
The Cured is released on Monday on DVD, and check out the full-size cover by clicking on the packshot.
|
FILM PICTURE QUALITY SOUND QUALITY EXTRAS |
2 7 7 1 |
| OVERALL | 4 |
Detailed specs:
Cert: 
Running time: 91 mins
Year: 2018
Distributor: Arrow Films
Released: May 11th 2018
Chapters: 12
Cat.no: FCD1746
Sound: Dolby Digital 5.1
Languages: English
Subtitles: English
Widescreen: 2.35:1
Disc Format: DVD9
Director: David Freyne
Producers: Rory Dungan, Rachael O’Kane and Ellen Page
screenplay: David Freyne
Music: Rory Friers
Abbie: Ellen Page
Senan: Sam Keeley
Conor: Tom Vaughan-Lawlor
Cantor: Stuart Graham
Dr. Lyons: Paula Malcomson
Allison: Natalia Kostrzewa
Jo Landecker: Hilda Fay
Catherine: Sarah Kinlen
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.