Cinderella’s Curse
Not to be confused with Cinderella’s Revenge, which seems to be a slightly costlier take on the same idea.
It’s another dark take on a childhood tale – which was already so full of cruelty pantomimes have to nicen it up with comedy and the cutes – as abused stepdaughter Cinderella (Kelly Rian Sanson) conjures up a Fairy Godmother (Chrissie Wunna) who looks like a refugee from those movies Lucio Fulci made when the budgets ran low and has three Cenbitish minions who could pass for background ghouls in a Bruno Mattei zombie movie. Obviously, Carrie borrows a lot from the ‘you will go to the ball’ plot thread of Cinderella and this in turn adds a lot more Carrie to the set-up in which the nastier stepsister Ingrid (Lauren Budd) is in cahoots with not-so-charming Prince Levin (Sam Barrett) to dupe the poor girl into becoming the butt of the uppercrust guests’ sadism.
However, she has one wish left and uses it empowering herself to take revenge – using a glass slipperheel as a spike – on folk who’ve mistreated her, including the other sister (Natasha Tosini) and a particularly vile stepmother (Danielle Scott). A lot of contemporary British horror films look to Hammer or Pete Walker or Amicus, but this is a rare 2020s effort which goes for the demented guignol, strident melodramatics, twisted cruelty, ketchup-sloshing and misanthropy of Andy Milligan’s UK-lensed pictures. That’s not necessarily an unadulterated good thing, but it’s short enough not to suffer too much from its predictability and performances are mostly committed. Scripted by Harry Boxley and directed by Louisa Warren, who both have a ton of credits in the scrappy British indie horror scene.
You say ‘obviously..’, but until reading the above, the Cinderella influence on Carrie was not apparent to me! Wonderful. Did I tell you of my theory that Deer Hunter is Wizard Of Oz in reverse?
Posted by wmsagittarius | August 22, 2024, 11:58 pm