This is a re-run with only the slightest of edits, so please don’t ask me what the heck I was thinking when I wrote any given entry into this section.
Welcome to the extremely generic secondary fantasy world of SAGA that is – I’m not kidding – the background for a bunch of – possibly popular – fantasy miniatures!
There’s trouble afoot in whatever the damn land this takes place in is called. A shadowy cult of undead and cursed known as the Shadow Cabal (or sometimes just the Shadow) is planning a ritual to bring the Elder God of Death back from wherever he is, with hopefully resulting undead armies and other fun stuff for the junior fantasy conqueror who can’t get any dragons. One of the younger gods of good (though her interpretation of the concept of “good” will leave quite a bit to be desired during the course of the film), known as the Prophetess, gets wind of the problem and sends out her cleric (though he seems to be more of a paladin, D&D class-wise) Keltus the Wanderer (Richard McWilliams) to solve the situation, because clearly, this is the kind of problem that you wouldn’t throw a few people more at.
Anyway, Keltus will have to team up with anger management impaired elven bounty hunter Nemyt (Danielle Chuchran), cursed with the sign of the shadow and therefore eventual evilness by an orc shaman she has killed, and former orc chieftain Kullimon the Black (Paul D. Hunt), whose tribe has been taken over by the Shadow against his will, to resolve the situation.
Apart from the whole evil cult thing, other problems arise: Keltus’s plan to fight his enemy is really the sort of thing that could all too easily end up actually helping the Shadow and damn Nemyt’s soul; Nemyt hates all orcs with a passion, and Kullimon isn’t too keen on elves or human clerics himself; and Keltus’s goddess really seems to be more Lawful Evil than any other alignment.
Fortunately, these particular elves, orcs and men might just be able to get over the things that divide them, might just have quite a bit of heroic back bone when they need it, and the Prophetess just might not be the only goddess interested in Keltus (for reasons I don’t even want to speculate about).
Don’t tell anyone, but I’m convinced in these post Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit times, we live in something of a golden age of low to extremely low budget sword and sorcery and fantasy cinema. Sure, many of the resulting films look like their elves, orcs, and monsters were created with resources left over from various LARPing sessions, and their plots are generally made with secondary world fantasy cookie cutters, but that’s the kind of minor stuff that is not going to keep me from enjoying a film about people and creatures with pointy ears going at each other with swords.
Curse (or whichever of its many titles you choose) certainly has its problems in the plot department, with the basic quest being pretty bland, and its not very interesting attempts at turning the whole affair into a redemption story for Keltus and Nemyt falling flat by virtue of at least Keltus never doing anything much worthy of redemption. Instead, Keltus eventually gets killed and then revived by a goddess with a love of hopeless causes, without having to actually do anything for it, and Nemyt’s redemptive act only carries the most tenuous connections with the things she needs to redeem herself for. On the other hand, the characters are generally likeable, particularly Hunt’s Kullimon, who seems rather more worldly than his two future friends, and certainly gets all the best lines. It helps that the film’s core trio of actors is decent enough, with Hunt and Chuchran even charismatic enough it’s not too difficult to ignore all the grunting and snarling they have to do.
The rest of the script is basically competent, with decent pacing, and a clear idea of the fact that this sort of film really needs a fight against a different creature or enemy every fifteen minutes or so much more than it needs anything else.
These fights are quite well done, too, with Chuchran (who gets to have an acrobatic fighting style not too far off from that of a wuxia film character) and Hunt making for attractive screen fighters even in those moments where there’s clearly no stunt person substitution going on, and some very fun choreography that makes much of the film’s limited resources. Director John Lyde for his part provides ample space for the fights and fighters to shine in, using little obfuscation of what is going on on screen. McWilliams, on the other hand, often looks as if he’s just stumbling after his sword in these scenes, but two out of three ain’t bad.
The make-up and effects are all over the place in quality with Kullimon’s orc make-up one of Curse’s high points, the sort of make-up job that might not look real but keeps the actor’s face expressive enough for him to still act. Among the rest of the effects, there’s some ridiculous stuff (the final enemy, for example who looks like nothing so much like a mid-level boss from a video game made in 2006 or so), some neat, some mediocre, and a dwarf who looks to so weirdly artificial he actually hits the same sort of freakishness as your run of the mill evil clown.
All this adds up to something better than I’d ask of a tiny low budget sword and sorcery movie. The film does perhaps take its plot a bit too seriously for some tastes, but if the film itself didn’t why should the audience? If you’re not willing to just accept the D&D module style of the whole affair, this is not a film actually meant for you anyway, I very much suspect. I have no problems with that, and so feel myself in a good position to enjoy how much Lyde et al just go for it, and how fun the resulting film turns out to be.
And even though much of the dialogue is a bit too heavy and portentous for its own good, there’s actually a nice series of witty lines too, not so self-conscious as to rip you out of the world the film tries so hard – if cheaply - to create but enough of it to add to the sense of fun I got from the film.
All in all, Curse of the Shadow is a positive surprise, at least if you like the things D&D level fantasy or Italian sword and sorcery films have to offer, or just enjoy watching very competent people fighting on screen.