The Cured (2018) Movie Review

It’s as well to have a sound variation in mind when reaching for the worn handle attached to the zombie genre. There’s barely an angle that hasn’t been worked. Tom Vaughn-Lawlor evidently likes working in Dublin City; he spent five years as gangster/druggie ‘Nidge’ in the Ireland TV series ‘Love/Hate’, filming on these very same streets from 2010 to 2015.

It’s there in the title. Following an outbreak of flesh-eating caused by the evocatively named Maze virus, scientists devise a cure that allows recovering ghouls (George A Romero’s original description) a route back into worthwhile society. That route is not without its grim detours. The cured are haunted by memories of what they did. Not every citizen welcomes their return. The newly normal Senan (Sam Keeley) does, however, find a berth with his widowed sister-in-law Abbie (Ellen Page).

Elsewhere, Conor (Tom Vaughan-Lawlor), a former lawyer, also among the cured, finds his rehabilitation even less comfy as he edges towards insurrection. The relationships between the three principals drive the action and generate the sociological mulch.

Shot in and around a convincingly battered, appropriately damp Dublin, The Cured profits from first-class performances. Page is muffled by grief. Sam Keeley, an Irish actor who’s been everywhere over the last decade, including the Irish TV Medical series ‘The Clinic’, carries impressive weight of trauma through every scene. And, not for the first time, a charismatic, focused Tom Vaughan Lawlor who bosses the screen into compliance.

The Cured is not a puzzle. It does not have a solution. But the key to its meanings is tied up with Conor’s character. The film emerges following a period when refugees and asylum seekers have been victimised as the source of all society’s ills. Pocket demagogues ride such discontent to dangerous success. The Cured identifies its title characters as victims and, if so inclined, the audience can make their own connections with the wider world.If anything, political analogies are a little too busy here; the core action gets a little swamped by heavy ‘importance’ in the closing stages, somewhat.

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