Movie Review – Eight for Silver (2021)
Starring Boyd Holbrook, Kelly Reilly, Alistair Petrie, Roxane Duran, and Áine Rose Daly.
SYNOPSIS:
In rural 19th-century France, a mysterious, possibly supernatural menace threatens a small village. John McBride, a pathologist, comes to town to investigate the danger – and exorcise some of his own demons in the process.
While the post-
Twilight era ushered in an abundance of inventive and left-field vampire films, werewolf cinema hasn’t ever really had the same reactionary, watershed moment. But Sean Ellis’ (
Metro Manilla, Anthropoid)
Eight for Silver does just enough tinkering with the prototypical lycanthrope formula to deliver an entertaining time, in spite of its excessive length and oft-plodding pace.
Posted on Sunday, January 31st, 2021 by Ben Pearson
Werewolf stories frequently involve allegorical explorations of the duality of man: the clash between the “civilized” surface layer and the violent beast within. But unlike so many other films in this genre, writer/director
Sean Ellis‘s new werewolf thriller
Eight for Silver does not fixate on a gruesome physical transformation to illustrate that duality. Instead, Ellis deploys the werewolf as a roaming specter hellbent on revenge – and in this film, innocent people are forced to suffer for the sins of their elders.
Primarily set in the late 1800s during a cholera epidemic (which obviously adds an extra layer of timeliness), the majority of the story centers on the wealthy Laurent family, who live in an isolated manor in the English countryside where the skies are always gray and a thin layer of fog never seems to fully dissipate. The patriarch, Seamus (