The Curse of Audrey Earnshaw (2020) maintains a beautiful consistency

 

Up-and-coming director Thomas Robert Lee sets high expectations for future projects (image courtesy of youtube.com)

The Curse of Audrey Earnshaw, or its original title, The Ballad of Audrey Earnshaw, is Thomas Robert Lee's second movie. The Canadian both wrote and directed this artistic pleasure and has fundamentally set the bar high for his career moving forward in the film industry. His first proper foray into movie-making comes in the form of Empyrean, an independently financed, black and white, science fiction drama about a man waking up from a near-death experience who experiences strange happenings resulting from that awakening. 

Asian Does Horror rarely gives an extended profile of a movie's director, but we were impressed by the storyline, production quality and art direction for The Curse of Audrey Earnshaw. 

(Image courtesy of nerdist.com)

The Curse of Audrey Earnshaw opens up with a short introduction of the events following the movie.

"In 1873, a group of families separated from the Church of Ireland and established an isolated settlement in North America. World wards broke out. Scientific knowledge expanded. Yet the villagers kept to the old ways. 1956 - Following a phenomenon later dubbed the eclipse, a pestilence spread throughout the community, poisoning the soil and corrupting livestock. The sole exception was a farmstead belonging to Agatha Earnshaw, a woman suspected of heresy whose land remained prosperous. Agatha gave birth to a daughter during the eclipse, she has kept the child secret from the villagers. For the last 17 years, the community struggled through increasing hardships, none so damning as the sense that god has abandoned them."

Viewers are treated to an artistic vision from the director himself with tastefully shot scenes, a beautiful set, a good location and worthwhile acting from the cast including Jessica Reynolds (Audrey Earnshaw), Catherine Walker (Agatha Earnshaw), Jared Abrahamson (Colm Dwyer), Hannah Emily Anderson (Bridget Dwyer), Sean McGinley (Seamus Dwyer), Don McKellar (Bernard Buckley) and Geraldine O'Rawe (Deirdre Buckley). 

(Image courtesy of screendaily.com)

The movie gives a few, well-deserving nods to The VVitch (2015) and The Village (2004) in terms of theme and storyline. It was a nice compliment from Thomas Robert Lee to take the best qualities from these two movies and incorporate them into this project. The nods are a compliment to M. Night Shyamalan's originality and Robert Eggers' stunning cinematography. 

The story was pretty straight forward, a pestilence has ravaged the crops and livestock of a village full of isolated protestants and they blame Agatha Earnshaw of witchcraft, since her crops are the only ones thriving. Unbeknownst to them, Agatha does indeed belong to a coven of witches. This movie is basically a cautionary tale not to mess with witches and the villagers learn that the hard way. 

Lee's story telling is also impressive, as he separated the pacing into chapters and did a very good job showcasing the villagers' slow descent into madness. This madness can be portrayed either through violent actions towards themselves or to the environment. The mutilation of livestock was a good example of that. However, for a slow-paced movie, we would've liked the insanity to be stretched a little bit more, but we understood that only so much could be fit into a one and a half hour movie. 

Based on the screenshots alone, you can tell that this movie was visually pleasing (Image courtesy of hollywoodreporter.com)

As the movie progresses, we are shown how the villagers die and the identity of Audrey's father is answered (although theories are left to the viewer's imagination). 

At the end, we see a little snippet of the current times that the community is actually living in as throughout the movie, Lee does a good job showcasing the isolation the villagers have kept themselves in from the outside world. 

The ending is pretty satisfactory, as we see Audrey leave the village, but not before granting one last curse on the only people left. 

All in all, it was a good watch, but a story like this has been done before and Lee took too much inspiration from Eggers and Shyamalan. Also the pacing of the movie could've been done better. Overall, we give The Curse of Audrey Earnshaw 👻👻👻 ghost emojis out of five.