Unfortunately, the film is not so famous, but it is able to bring great pleasure to all fans of truly fascinating mystical paintings, claiming an original plot idea that can influence the viewer. The main message, despite the supernatural component, concerns the real thing inherent in our human nature from time immemorial, greedy to the point of curiosity, to witness the spectacles and sensations, sometimes, alas, in spite of the moral side of the issue. Brutal executions in ancient times, museums of perverted torture, news of disasters from the media, domestic violence on television programs or everyday violence on YouTube, captured on cell phones – all this attracts curious, unpleasantly denouncing that a person does not change in his history, driven by the desire to be an idle witness to someone’s pain, death. Is there a moral limit to this sin of looking and not acting, and what the most godless spectacle could one day gather a crowd of greedy eyes around, cursed it for ever and ever?
The film about this, however, its value is that the topical question addressed to the audience, in addition to the real fear of being part of an immoral breed, also captivates the artistic framing of a smart atmospheric detective, subtly using genre mysticism. British director Brian Gilbert, who previously staged a biographical drama about Oscar Wilde with Stephen Fry, carefully uses the main stuffing of the story, masterfully leading the memory-lost heroine of the film and the viewer through a mysterious detective. He in a leisurely manner stretches the genre savor, constantly intriguing, up to the very climax, opening a series of difficult dilemmas concerning faith, morality, sin and redemption to the charming music of Anne Dudley, giving something sublimely heavenly and at the same time terrible, symbolizing God’s punishment. In this tape, you should not expect visual nightmares, although there is a dose of scattered boo-effects. It fascinates with a mystery that foreshadows a terrible gut, leads to the world of suspense with the expectation of something bad, some frightening trick, causes goosebumps from the hidden truth that originates in biblical motifs, but not so much in religion as in our faith and spirituality, giving spiritual agony or peace.
This is the picture about which it is important not to write a lot and not to read, so as not to reveal to the future viewer a knowing clue to the hidden secret, building a fascinating mystical detective, shot in a well-chosen gloomy entourage of a small English town, where the evil fate has outlined his next collection (this is how the original title of the film is translated) of the cursed, relentlessly going from the hills and plains to the designated place, and then to the new and so to infinity while there are people and their bad deeds that give birth to crowds of onlookers.
8 out of 10