Due to changing life circumstances, I've been having an old fashioned blog day today and Curse of the Sin Eater is the second horror I have watched for review. Directed by Justin Denton in his feature length directorial debut, and co-written by Adam Davis and Will Corona Pilgrim, this puts a fresh spin on the idea of selling your soul for power and riches.
Rick Malone (Carter Shimp - Ghosts of the Void) is a young and poor construction worker. Hired as part of a team working on a rich man's estate, he is unable to resist the temptation when the opportunity comes to steal some money he discovers in the mansion. Caught by the estate owner - elderly and terminally ill George Drayton (Larry Yando), the man takes pity on Rick and later gives him a strange proposal. With George nearing the end of his life, and with no one in line to inherit his vast wealth, George tells Rick that he can be given everything on one condition. That weird condition is that Rick must eat a meal off of George's corpse when he has died and then recite a strange series of phrases. With the young man desperate for money, he agrees, and when the time comes he performs the strange ritual. With that done he indeed inherits wealth beyond comprehension. But there is a twist in the deal, for it turns out that by doing what he has done, he has inherited all the sins of George, and now finds himself haunted by vengeful spirits who hold him responsible for all the sins of that man.
I liked this twist on the classic Faustian tale, it was well made and had some effective moments. As a protagonist, Rick was hardly the most likeable person. It wasn't that he was a bad person, more that he was an oddball, and really didn't seem to have much personality. Once he begins to get haunted he withdraws even more, with his situation appearing to be causing rapid physical and mental health issues. The stand-out character here was Elizabeth Laidlaw as head butler Antonette Mormo. She gave an important performance as the neutral and seemingly all knowing person who was able to give confirmation to Rick about his fears about the supernatural thing that is happening to him.
There were some memorable scenes here, the biggest one being the montage scene of the corpse meal, where Rick is forced to eat course after course of disgusting looking food. Some parts of the film were not as well handled. Early on for instance, Rick discovers he is able to kind of exorcise ghosts if he confesses the sins related to that particular ghost to a priest to absolve them. Due to Rick's insistence on only dealing with one priest in particular (Father Eli played by J. Zane Stephens), that potential plot path is curtailed sooner than it felt it needed to be.
The highlight in terms of spectacle were the various mutilated ghosts who haunt Rick. There was a real feeling of Thir13en Ghosts to this, with each ghost having its own story baked into its condition, such as the man wearing what appears to be a gimp mask with a very long rope wrapped around his neck. The ghost make-up looked great and created some effective scenes of terror for the poor protagonist. I enjoyed how the story played out, and there were some interesting plot developments along the way.
Curse of the Sin Eater was a much better film than I expected it would be. I thought the story told did enough to stand out on its own, and there were some neatly put together scenes. The biggest issue with this, and what only just prevented this from getting a higher score, was how bland of a lead that Rick was, he was neither someone I was really rooting for, nor someone who I disliked, he was just 'there'. For a unique take at the typical 'sell your soul to the devil' type story, this one left an impression.
SCORE:
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