Starring Boyd Holbrook, Kelly Reilly, Alistair Petrie
Even though this story of a community beset by a moonlight curse is set in 19th-century France, Sean Ellis’ period werewolf movie is probably the most commercial film in this year’s horror lineup at the Sundance Film Festival. It has adventure, a model leading man in Boyd Holbrook (
Logan,
The Predator), an impressive body count and a ton of CGI. In fact,
Eight For Silver probably relies a little too much on action instead of embracing the exceptional atmosphere created by art director Paulo Goncalves. Still, any filmmakers brave enough to add an entry that will undoubtedly be compared to the best werewolf movies ever made should feel proud. Especially one with this amount of epic scale and glorious grandeur.
Amelia Crouch, Alistair Petrie and cast in Eight for Silver
Brooding and baleful, even if it loses bite after a strong opening.
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Boyd Holbrook plays a late 19th century pathologist investigating a violent curse laying waste to landowners and villagers in Sean Ellis reanimation of the werewolf legend.
Writer-director Sean Ellis revisits the werewolf legend as a fogbound descent into Victorian Gothic in
Eight for Silver. Led by Boyd Holbrook as a pathologist in the late 1800s who knows a thing or two about nightmarish curses, stalking lycanthropic beasts and family tragedy, the film is more suspenseful than scary, higher on sustained atmosphere than well-rounded characters. But it moves along at a stately pace and remains involving, driven by eerie ambient music, soupy chiaroscuro visuals and sporadic bursts of blood, gore and body horror. It won’t disturb Lon Chaney Jr. in his grave, but still offers meat for genre fans to chew on.