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The Cured

New life for an old genre

The good news is that there’s now a treatment for zombie-ism. The bad is that those cured face strong social condemnation for what they did. And they can still remember all those fun brain-eating experiences.  This is basically a character study of one such cured young man (Sam Keeley) who has been welcomed back into his sister-in-law’s (Ellen Page) family but is finding social forgiveness and understanding in short supply.

This moody little horror/drama from rookie writer/director David Freyne may be a bit overambitious. He’s trying for cerebral existentialism with a dash of refugee-crisis political allegory while still hoping to satisfy more traditional, gore-loving zombie-heads (whose patience through the talky bits will be rewarded in the third act).

The result on both sides may fall short of what he envisions, but he definitely gets points for execution and for trying to take the wheezy old zombie genre in a new direction.

(95 min)