Rent Eight for Silver (2022)

Chilling - Eight for Silver review by sb

FILM & REVIEW Aka Eight for Silver - very effective slice of Gothic Folk Horror set in rural France in the late 19th Century. Local landowner Lamount (Petrie) has a bunch of local gypsies cleared from his land using appalling brutality and finds a curse laid on him and his family involving a set of silver teeth. Soon villagers are being slaughtered by some beast and his own son dissapears. Into this comes pathologist McBride (Holbrook) who lost his own family to a similar attack several years ago who knows more than he is letting on. The locals all assume it’s a wolf but as things develop it’s clear something far more deadly is at large… It’s very well done full of brooding atmosphere with icy forests and swirling mists giving it a real Hammer Horror feel with a good solid cast (Kelly as the long suffering wife is very good) and it’s remarkably gruesome at times as the true nightmare is revealed . It’s got a a really interesting pre-title sequence whose meaning only becomes clear at the very end……very good indeed - 4/5

Bonus points for actually being an ok horror - Eight for Silver review by JD

Horrors are very hit and miss. Its hard genre to get right and i guess when you whittle down the group who like your film - often its hardly worth it.

Here we have curse, investigator, people getting picked off and huge clue as to the end, at the start.

What wins this for me is it keeps the usual failures you see in horrors to a minimum.

They are still there, but the writers/director seem to be making an effort rather than go for the cheap plot progression and use jump scares to validate the horror tag.

Even the nasties are well handled, not kept to the dark so your wondering what they are, but at the same time they get very limited frames to keep the losing mystery and creature effects fails to a minimum.

The end i found a bit rushed (i.e started to do some generic horror fails to progress the plot) and the setup from the beginning was a bit confusing (were we ever told the curse was undone in this fashion and how was it found out?) Its was a nicely setup piece of the story tho and ill give it the benefit of the doubt as maybe i did miss someone suddenly dream that was the answer!

Overall its a decent horror. Possibly worthy of 4 stars.

The Cursed ... - Eight for Silver review by NP

A superbly photographed and richly atmospheric take on the legend of lycanthropy. Murmurs of people being attacked by a wild animal, some impressively gory bites and injuries and a very occasionally glimpsed, surprisingly un-hirsute ‘thing’. Sean Ellis has directed, produced and written this, so clearly has some great interest in suggested werewolfery.

The acting is clipped and stoical, with characters only occasionally given to hysteria. The dialogue is unfrilled, with only the occasional anachronistic Americanism creeping into the 19th Century French setting.

Steeped in chill mist, there is a grand old-fashioned fairy-tale darkness about this tale, and Robin Foster’s score does much to convey the various levels of impending doom. Not only do the flaming torches and chilled misty woodlands constantly remind us there is something most definitely ‘out there’, but also casts welcome shadows of the more impressive Hammer films.

The acting is terrific across the board, with Kelly Reilly as Isabelle deserving a special mention as the glue that holds everyone together as panic and bloodshed kick in. CGI only occasionally threatens to dislodge the magic but is used sparingly and mostly to great effect. My score is 8 out of 10.