I think I’m going to have to rate this movie on a curve. It’s a bleak, dark, atmospheric film to be sure, but either it’s TOO bleak and TOO dark or there was a projection problem in my theater because so much of this film was hard to make out. But since it could have been the projection, I’m giving it a score a bit higher than I really feel, based on some of the merits I could see.

Set in Europe in the late 1800s, a wealthy land owner does some gypsies dirty and now we have one of them there gypsy curses (probably the house is built on an Indian burial ground too.. jk). Bad dreams run amok and soon a werewolf is too. Can a visiting pathologist with his own axe to grind save these very wealthy people from the curse?

I know this film is going for a moody, slow, atmospheric burn… this is not an A24 film… but you could be forgiven for thinking so. It’s devotion to being a slow… sloooooow… ugh. so slow. burn is real. And that’s where the ants got in my pants… It was so slow and the atmosphere so dark and murky, I felt lost much of the time. And, as I said, maybe that’s unfair to the film.

I will say there’s a pretty remarkable sequence early on involving hired goons and the gypsy camp. One single unmoving, unblinking take that shows so much coordination, horrific imagery, and little stories that I sat up and took notice. Really accomplished film-making and character wrangling.

And there are some moments of horror that show imagination, especially given the old tropes of werewolf movies. Things aren’t normal or even particularly furry in this flick… definitely more goopy and drippy, though (from what I’ve seen in YouTube videos since I saw the flick) maybe it was better the film was so dark because the CGI wasn’t exactly up to snuff.

Plus there’s a LOT of fake-out dream sequences that end with GRR monster face! Save me from that trope please. Doesn’t matter if the film was too dark or not, that just gets old.

BY the final half hour, I was starting to finally engage with this overly long movie. Between the early sequence, the more imaginative take on werewolves, and a decent end sequence, I came away overall a little more positive than when I was sitting there trapped in the seat for the first hour.

Again, maybe this is a victim of a projection or maybe it’s pacing just wasn’t for me. But since there’s that asterisk, I’m giving it a slight bump up from my original thoughts. Maybe it could go higher under other circumstances.

Score: 72