Welcome back to Movie Recaps.
Today I will show you a horror film from 2021, titled The Cursed.
Spoilers ahead!
Watch out and take care.
It's late at night in the city when a drunk man returns to his apartment, discovering
that the lights aren't working and the tv has no signal.
He looks out the window with a golf club in hand, thinking it may be a thief, but the
truth is creepier than that.
A mysterious figure appears behind him and doesn't seem bothered when the man hits him
with the club.
As a weird tattoo appears on his wrist that makes his skin go black, the mysterious figure
attacks the man, throwing him around and causing him to get infected by something weird on
the spot where he touches him.
Then, he bites the man on the neck, infecting him further while his own body crumbles into
ashes.
Sometime later, the police are reviewing the case.
The autopsy indicates the victim died of Paralytic Shellfish Poison, and the attacker was already
dead three months ago.
This isn't the first time this police department deals with a strange case and detective Jung
knows exactly who to call.
Meanwhile, famous reporter Jin-Hee is appearing on the radio to present her new book about
the paranormal cases that she's covered on her independent news channel.
During the interview, the host takes calls from the public, and the first one comes from
a mysterious creepy voice.
This man claims to be behind the murder case the police are currently investigating and
he wants to be interviewed by Jin-Hee herself the next day at an address he sends to her
phone.
After the show, Jin-Hee goes back to the office, where all her employees are dealing with hundreds
of calls asking about the creepy voice on the radio.
Jin-Hee also gets to meet Jessie, the new intern in charge of on-site shooting who has
recently arrived in the country.
Then, she meets with her partner Kim, who has already been pulling some favors to get
information on the recent murder case.
The victim had been a researcher at Seungil Pharmaceutical, but there are no clues on
the killer other than he's been dead for three months and his hoodie had an identification
number.
Kim has put his hands on a bunch of pictures as well, and Jin-Hee gets to see the tattoo
on the attacker's wrist, confirming it's the type used to cast a spell.
They're suddenly interrupted by Jung, who has come to talk about the voice on the radio
both as a cop and as Jin-Hee's husband.
He doesn't want her to do the interview because it's very dangerous, but Jin-Hee doesn't care
because this may be the only chance to catch the killer.
Jung accepts that's true and lets her do the interview under the condition the police will
be guarding her, which Jin-Hee accepts.
After Jung leaves, Kim shows Jin-Hee a video he was sent from Japan where a young witch
is conducting an exorcism in a haunted house.
Jin-Hee recognizes this girl as So-Jin, who had been involved in some of the cases Jin-Hee
wrote about.
Later, Jin-Hee goes to a café where she remembers the case she investigated with So-Jin and
learned about the girl's powers.
Suddenly, all the lights go out and Jin-Hee is attacked by the hoodie killer.
However, as soon as the attacker grabs her by the neck, he drops her and twists his body
on the floor, revealing So-Jin behind him wearing her witch clothes.
At that moment, Jin-Hee wakes up and realizes it was all a dream.
The next day, Jin-Hee and her crew get ready to stream the interview while the police watch
through security cameras.
The man that arrives is Mr. Park, who gives out his ID number to confirm he's saying a
real name.
The police check he has no criminal record, but he had been reported as missing.
Park explains he's a spellcaster that can manipulate dead bodies, and he was the one
that sent that zombie to commit murder two days ago.
He's asked for this interview because he wants to warn everyone that he'll kill three more
people soon, and the names he mentions as his future victims are all the higher-ups
from Seungil Pharmaceutical.
If they want to stop Park from killing more people on the dates he proceeds to list, then
the company's chairman must come to Jin-Hee's show to offer an apology, which Jin-Hee will
have to make sure is sincere.
Then, Park takes out a knife to bring Jin-Hee as hostage on his way out.
Jessie follows them with the camera to keep the stream going, and the cops rush to surround
them.
Park and Jin-Hee enter the elevator and Jung manages to jump inside too before the doors
close, but all the other agents will have to take the stairs.
Jung and Park begin fighting, but Park shows extraordinary force and easily overpowers
Jung.
In the struggle, Jung's gun falls, so Jin-Hee grabs it and shoots Park in the leg, but it
doesn't bother Park at all.
When they make it to the ground floor, Park uses the knife again to drag Jin-Hee out with
him to protect himself from the cops that are now surrounding them.
Suddenly, Jin-Hee notices the weird tattoo appearing on Park's wrist and realizes he
isn't actually the killer, the real murderer has been using it to pass on his message.
Park is just another zombie that crumbles to dust on the ground.
Sometime later, the board members of Seungil Pharmaceutical review the interview to decide
what to do.
Two of the future victims are there: Director Min-Sub and CEO Lee.
However, Chairman Byun-Seung is at his villa recuperating from his blood sugar problems,
so his daughter Mi-Young is speaking for him.
Min-Sub is panicking because he was the first one on the list, but Mi-Young refuses to call
her father to avoid making his health worse.
An argument ensues that is interrupted by Lee, who finally speaks up by saying they
need to let the cops do their job and that company will assign plenty of bodyguards to
Min-Sub to keep him safe.
After the meeting is over, Jung and his partner Kang ask Lee and Mi-Young some questions.
Mi-Young explains that Park used to be the leader of the new R&D team, but he suddenly
disappeared without doing the project handover.
Kang points out that when Park's family reported him missing, they said he never came back
from work, but Mi-Young can't help them there.
Park used to work at an old company building that is now abandoned, so they don't have
any records of his last day on the job.
Jung asks Lee what Byun-Seung should be apologizing about, but Mi-Young doesn't let Lee answer
that and just asks the police to do their jobs.
Meanwhile, Jin-Hee and detective Yoo talk to Professor Tak, an expert on the study of
the paranormal.
He's researched the tattoo and confirms it's the one used to make zombies, he also points
out that only one country uses this kind of design: Indonesia.
They have witch doctors known as shamans who have many ways to manipulate bodes, the main
one being on the ground where the body died.
They mix the ground's mud with the shamans' blood and hair or nails from the bodies to
make sculptures that are put on the incantation design, which explains why all the criminals
so far have crumbled like clay.
Later in the evening, Jin-Hee gets a call from Kim.
He has finally found out the identity of the first attacker, who had been reported missing
by his family five years ago.
It seems this guy came to the country with a fake passport, so Kim will be interviewing
the guy behind that passport tomorrow.
The next day at the local prison, Kim visits Huang, the man that provided the fake passport,
and Huang accepts to share some information in exchange for cigarettes and a reduced sentence.
It turns out Huang also used to work for Seungil Pharmaceutical, and six months ago, the company
started secretly recruiting people for clinical trials.
This job pays well, and all the recruits wore gray hoodies with a number on them.
The research had orders to only recruit bums with no relatives, but there weren't enough
homeless people that met the requirements, so Huang began using illegal immigrants.
All those people, who were around a hundred, died in a few months.
In the meantime, the Seungil Pharmaceutical headquarters are surrounded by bodyguards
and the police to protect Min-Sub.
This also means lots of reporters are accumulating outside, including Jin-Hee and her crew.
Soon, a person wearing one of those hoodies approaches the building and the police try
to stop them, but it's incredibly easy for the zombie to use their strength to easily
beat them all up.
Once that's taken care of, the zombie is joined by a whole group of walking bodies.
The zombie horde is too big and strong to be stopped by normal men and they easily break
through the guards' line of defense to get inside.
Ignoring the bullets shot at them, they begin climbing the stairs, so Jung decides to escort
Lee and Min-Sub out of the building before the zombies reach them.
The group makes it to the elevator that will take them to the underground parking lot,
and when the zombies notice this, they jump off the stairs to reach the ground floor faster
since they can just stand up and put their bones back in place.
Seeing the zombies go down, Jin-Hee and her cameraman get in their van and go to the parking
lot too, where they run over a couple of the creatures.
This gives Jung's group the chance to get in a car and escape, yet it isn't enough.
The zombies just approach the cabs at the nearby avenue and kick the drivers off to
take control and go after Jung, starting a chase through the city.
Jin-Hee follows them as well so they can keep recording the whole thing for their stream.
After lots of twists and turns, the cabs manage to surround Jung's car and the zombies jump
on it to try to attack the passengers.
Jung's car eventually comes to a stop outside a tunnel and the zombies waste no time in
dragging Min-Sub out to kill him.
Lee is spared for now, but in the struggle, Jung was scratched and he's now infected.
Once the hunt is done, all the zombies crumble into dust.
Jung is taken to the hospital and put into quarantine, so Jin-Hee can only watch him
from afar.
In the evening, a terrified Lee visits Byun-Seung to ask him to apologize so this massacre can
be over.
However, Byun-Seung doesn't regret doing what he considers necessary experiments and decides
he'll talk to his daughter first before rushing into an apology because she's the future of
the company.
Giving up, Lee leaves, bumping into Mi-Young on his way out.
Lee takes the chance to point out that Mi-Young had been the head of that awful trial that
she pushed for to get more money after decades of the company only making medicine to help
people, which has always been his and Byun-Seung's dream.
However, Mi-Young says that's how cowards talk and that there's no room for dreams in
her company.
At the office, Jin-Hee, Kim, and the detectives call Tak to discuss what happened.
He saw the stream and noticed that the zombies couldn't move if they lost their hands, meaning
the tattoo is their weakness.
The doctors have said they can't find a cure for Jung, but Tak assures them it's not poison,
he's being affected by the curse too.
To save him, they'll have to stop the shaman.
After Tak hangs up, Kim shares all the information he got from Huang, including the fact that
a month after all the recruits died, a strange Indonesian man came to see Huang.
He said his family was working in the company, so Huang sent him to see Park to get him off
his back.
Huang also described this man's clothes as similar to a Taoist priest, which means he
must be the shaman.
The group's conversation's interrupted by the arrival of Lee, who wants to confess what
happened on camera.
The project had been an idea from their American investors; the plan was to develop a special
poison to use in chemical weapons.
He admits the company abused the poor and the homeless, so he's brought a bunch of related
documents for the detectives, including a list of the recruits.
Before leaving, Lee tells everyone that the chances of Byun-Seung apologizing are tiny.
Kim realizes the files by themselves are useless because they may have fake names, so they'll
need to compare the information with the police's official database to find the shaman's family.
At the same time, Jin-Hee remembers Tak's explanation of the ritual to summon zombies:
if the ground where they died is needed, then the shaman must be at the company's abandoned
lab building.
The team splits in two then: Kim and Kang will go check the names while Jin-Hee and
Yoo will go to the labs, unaware that a stranger on a bike is following them.
Inside the abandoned building, Jin-Hee and Yoo find a room painted with creepy magic
symbols and decide Tak can research them later, not noticing that the paint is moving.
When they hear a noise, they go upstairs to check it out and are suddenly attacked by
a zombie.
Fortunately, Yoo reacts quickly and shoots the creature until it loses its hand, but
he wastes all his bullets in the process.
There's a horde coming next though, so Jin-Hee and Yoo run away through a tunnel until they
make it into a room that they lock by putting furniture in front of the door.
However, there's a zombie there too and it grabs Jin-Hee by the neck to kill her, only
to be stopped by the stranger from the bike.
It turns out this is So-Jin, who has finally returned to the country.
She uses her powers to destroy the zombie, then she drags Jin-Hee and Yoo into another
room because the horde has managed to break through the flimsy furniture barrier.
In this room, So-Jin draws a spell on the floor to create an invisibility shield where
she and Jin-Hee hide, but Yoo doesn't make it in time and has to hide behind some furniture.
The zombies break in and go after Yoo, so So-Jin comes out after Jin-Hee tells her the
weakness is the tattoo.
By using her powers on that tattoo, it's extremely easy for So-Jin to fight the zombies and destroy
them one by one.
Now that it's truly over, So-Jin and Jin-Hee reunite with a hug.
It's morning by the time they leave the building and So-Jin shares what she's been doing all
this time: she stayed in Japan for a while before moving to China, where a priest at
a temple taught her how to control her powers.
The So-Jin that Jin-Hee saw in her nightmare had truly been her, and after having this
vision, So-Jin decided to come back to protect Jin-Hee.
Their conversation is interrupted by Yoo, who tells them he's learned Lee has ended
things for himself, which has caused Byun-Seung to accept to do the apology.
Jin-Hee rushes back to the city but So-Jin decides to stay with Yoo because she's sure
her powers will be of help.
The interview will be done at the Seungil Pharmaceutical's building, although Jin-Hee
still brings her team with her.
After Jessie fixes the podium, Byun-Seung comes in and apologizes to the general population
for the recent incidents, promising to be a more responsible company from now on.
However, the shaman wanted an apology for the trial victims and their families, not
for the population and Jin-Hee reminds Byun-Seung of this.
The chairman isn't sure about that, but Mi-Young tells him to do it to get this over with.
Byun-Seung sounds like a robot when he speaks because he doesn't actually mean the apology,
and Jin-Hee refuses to upload such a poor attitude, which starts an argument with Mi-Young.
Back at the abandoned lab, Tak, So-Jin, and the cops investigate the spell room, which
So-Jin recognizes as the same invisibility spell she used.
By quickly deleting the word written on the ground, So-Jin makes the illusion disappear
and reveals that the room is actually a long hallway.
The group crosses it until they make it to a morgue where the ground has lots of spell
symbols and the clay figurines Tak had described.
When they open a door at the back, a powerful light throws them back and reveals another
room where they finally find the shaman.
His defenses hold the entire team to the ground except for So-Jin, who tries to push through
while destroying the zombies the shaman throws at her.
Meanwhile, Kim and Kang finally make some progress, discovering one of the trial recruits
had been Jessie.
Kim sends a picture of the file to Jin-Hee to warn her, and Jin-Hee finally understands
that she had been chosen to record this in order to give Jessie access to Byun-Seung.
The apology is still not sounding sincere, so Jessie finally reveals her tattoo and begins
fighting the guards while Mi-Young takes her father away to safety.
Jessie runs after them, knocking out anyone that gets between her and the chairman's office
and even jumping through windows as a shortcut.
After beating a few more guards, Jessie enters the main office and approaches Byun-Seung
to kill him.
However at that moment, So-Jin finally manages to reach the shaman and uses her powers to
kill him, which automatically kills Jessie as well.
As the shaman dies, he looks at the last figurine which has Jessie's hair, thus So-Jin hands
it to him so he can leave this world together with his last relative.
Back at the company, Mi-Young takes advantage of all the bodyguards being unconscious to
enter the office and, with the help of some tissue, grab one of Jessie's fingers.
Then she uses it on her father to infect him as she explains it's time for him to go and
let the new generation take over.
As he dies, Byun-Seung sees a bottle in Mi-Young's hand and realizes Lee's death had actually
been a murder.
A moment later, the cops finally reach the office where Mi-Young is crying her heart
out, but Jin-Hee also arrives and tells her to stop pretending because they know everything.
When Jessie fixed the podium, he put a microphone on Byun-Seung's jacket for better transmission
sound, so now they have a recording of everything she said while her father died.
After the cops arrest Mi-Young, Jin-Hee and So-Jin meet at the hospital to visit Jung,
who is finally recovering thanks to the shaman's death.
So-Jin feels bad for the shaman because before he died, she had seen his memories of playing
with Jessie as a child and felt how much he loved her.
Three months later, Mi-Young has been released on the grounds of insufficient evidence.
However, one afternoon, Jin-Hee and So-Jin approach her in the parking lot to make her
confess if she doesn't want to get horrible magical consequences.
Meanwhile, an employee at a small local company is being paid pennies for his work.
After his shift is over, he decides to drink for a while, and his drunk wandering around
town makes him find a mysterious man drawing a spell on the ground.
Desperate for a better life, the man asks the stranger for his help.