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The Cursed is a werewolf thriller set during a pandemic. Not the one we’re currently trapped inside, but a cholera outbreak slowly making its way toward the small French countryside community in which the movie takes place. Lycanthropic chaos manages to get there quicker than the blue death, though; the race to see which living nightmare befalls the region first made me think of a horrid “Would You Rather” question come to life.

The Cursed, set in the 1880s, orbits around the Laurents, a prosperous British family with the biggest estate in the area. Soon into the film, it comes to the attention of its patriarch, Seamus (Alistair Petrie), that a Romani clan encamped on the edges of the property is requesting back the grounds he’s usurped that legally belong to them. The announcement prompts Seamus not to contemplate a fair solution but, in one of the film’s most gutting (and technically impressive) scenes, organize a massacre he concludes will put any land problems to bed. (Almost all of the carnage is shot in one excruciating static take from a hilltop.)

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