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.

Entertaining Pagan Horror - Eight for Silver review by GI

AKA The Cursed. An atmospheric pagan horror that is essentially a werewolf narrative utilising a Scandinavian mythology although the film is set in France in the 19th century. The film has an interesting prologue during a First World War western front battle. Then we begin the main story where a ruthless land owner massacres a small group of gypies who have a legitimate claim to part of his land. An old Roma woman curses him and soon the locals begin to have strange nightmares. A local boy is found dead and another goes missing. A pathologist (Boyd Holbrook) arrives and warns that there is an ancient evil now lurking in the woods. We have a cold, bleak, fogbound landscape creating the mysterious and shadowy atmosphere in what really is a creature feature. The film is a bit too long and begins to drag a bit and the creature is glimpsed but ultimately disappointing. There's gore galore including an autopsy scene that I'm guessing has been influenced by The Thing (1982) and Kelly Reilly as the landowner's wife although she's not given much to do here, sadly. This is a reasonably entertaining horror film with added mystery.