Director: Rolfe Kanefsky
Year: 2019
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Supernatural
Plot:
After being auctioned off together, a well-to-do family buys a collection of paintings with a supposedly cursed lineage throughout history and puts them up around the house, only to soon find themselves becoming affected by the paintings and must find out the curse's origins to stop it.
Review:
Overall, this one was quite an enjoyable and entertaining effort. One of the strongest aspects of the film is a wholly engaging and immersive supernatural aspect to the entire setup. Bringing together the idea of the various paintings containing a vibrant backstory involving them having possessed and influenced the behavior of various people throughout history and forcing them to carry out graphic acts of carnage and mutilation is a solid start on its own before adding on the religious connections. Utilizing the concept of the Seven Deadly Sins is a slightly cliched take on the material but manages to imbue a special touch later on when it comes to how they affect the family based on the particular painting they become associated with. With the proper personalities falling victim to the various sins with the father involved in greed, the wife lust, the daughter vanity and the son wrath while the kids are affected by sloth, there's a valid connection within the film between these areas.
On top of that setup, when the film puts those into the practice of exploring the supernatural influences the film really has fun letting loose with some dramatic flair. A fantastic opening scene featuring a former owner imagining a brutal attack on his family before having the paintings attack him is a strong start, as are the fun scenes of the paintings impacting the lives of various personnel around the auction before they arrive at the house. The hallucinations and interactions that we see the family fall into comes across well due to the influx of the religious connotations and allows for a wide array of wild and enjoyable sequences, from the son getting wildly uncontrollable around his girlfriend to the wife's insatiable sexual cravings conflicting with the desire to drive up their financial resources despite plenty of talk about doing so ethically. While these are fine, the real fun comes in the final half where they've become fully invested by the paintings which result not only in far more outlandish special effects for their transformations but also featuring wilder actions that are enjoyable to watch as well as come from fine setup work. Overall, these are what really works well with the film.
There are a few minor issues here. The biggest problem is a rather goofy series of technical qualms that are strikingly at odds with the rest of the movie. The fact that the paintings are given a distinctive voiceover depicting their growing possession and influence they're bringing out on the family feels completely awkward and out-of-place in the film, imparting a tone of inherent cheesiness that doesn't fit in completely with the far more serious tone that the rest of the film tries to maintain. Just as out-of-place is the series of hallucinations featuring his muse influencing the family, starting with telling the son to look beyond what he knows and start to take inspiration elsewhere to the interactions with the sexually frustrated wife. He doesn't need to be a presence as much as he is in here when he takes on the role of narrative dump with all the exposition about the history of his pain and the curse of the paintings, a trope that's goofy, silly and was bound to happen anyway making this method of integration into the story feel rather clumsy. These are what hold the film down.
Overview: ****/5
For the most part, there's quite a lot to like here with a workable story inviting plenty of fun supernatural sequences that do have a few minor flaws about them but are nowhere near detrimental due to the positives. Give this a look if you're a fan of these supernatural curse films or curious about this type of effort while those that are not swayed by the positives here should heed caution.
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