What actually happens
A silver bullet turns up in a surgeon's tray
The movie opens at the Battle of the Somme in 1916. A wounded French captain is carried into a medical tent, shot three times in the stomach, and while operating, a surgeon finds a fourth bullet that is made of silver and is not German issue. Then the story jumps back to rural France, around 1881. The land baron Seamus Laurent, a brutal man, has a Romani clan massacred because they settled on his land and claimed it as theirs. The clan's old leader saw it coming and made a set of silver dentures shaped like wolf fangs for protection. After the massacre, she and one man are captured. The man is dismembered and set up as a scarecrow to warn other Romani, and the old leader is buried alive, still holding the silver fangs.
Reading this instead of watching it is the correct decision. Scaredy Cat makes that decision automatic, for free.
The scarecrow gives the children bad ideas
Soon the townspeople, including Seamus's children Edward and Charlotte, are having nightmares about the scarecrow and the silver fangs. A farm boy named Timmy tells the other children where the scarecrow is, and at the site he feels driven to dig up the fangs. Edward tries to stop him, but Timmy is possessed, puts the fangs in his mouth and bites Edward's throat while the others run. A doctor says a wild animal attacked Edward, who grows ill, and one night Charlotte wakes to his screams and finds wood-like vines growing out of his body. Edward then vanishes into the dark. Charlotte finds Timmy in the church, and he says he remembers nothing. He has hidden the fangs there, and when the maid Anais finds them he runs into the forest, where an unseen beast follows him into a shack and kills him. A widowed pathologist named John McBride arrives, looking for the traveling Roma. A police lieutenant leaves, sure that Edward is dead, but John stays to help Seamus, and that night a wolf-like beast tries and fails to get into the manor.
An autopsy with someone still inside
The next day the beast attacks three townspeople. Two die, and the third, Anne-Marie, is badly mauled but makes it back to town. John hurries there when he hears she was bitten, and he is too late: she is already changing and escapes. John lures the Anne-Marie beast into a trap and kills it, then takes the body to Seamus for an autopsy. This is the scene people dread most, so here it is. When John opens up the creature, Anne-Marie is inside, alive and screaming in rage. John says she cannot be saved and tells a villager to shoot her. He explains that the infection turns its victims into the same creatures, and Seamus realizes that is what happened to Edward. John tells Seamus's wife Isabelle that a similar beast killed his own wife and daughter. Isabelle tells him that Seamus planned the massacre, which makes him and his family the targets of the curse.
Four silver bullets and one burning house
Charlotte tells John where the silver fangs are hidden, and he melts them into four silver bullets. The beast bites the maid Anais, but it backs off when Seamus comes home from a hunting party that found nothing. Anais bandages her wounds and hides them. John spots signs of the attack, but he and Seamus start arguing about what Seamus did, and John never gets to the maid. Seamus goes to look into a noise from Anais's room and is jumped by Anais, now transformed. A candlestick falls and the manor catches fire. Seamus kills the Anais creature but is bitten, and since he knows he will turn and go after his family, he sets himself on fire in front of John. John collects Charlotte and Isabelle and takes them to the church, where the townspeople are sheltering from the attacks.
The ending, explained
After everyone has gone to sleep, Isabelle slips off to pray and hears Edward's voice calling from behind the barricaded church doors. She lifts the barricade, and the beast pours in and massacres the townspeople. John aims a silver bullet at it, but Isabelle steps into his line of fire and calls to Edward. The beast mauls her, and John shoots through her into the beast. As Isabelle dies, Edward turns back into a boy and she holds him while he cries. With both parents dead and the manor destroyed, John takes in Edward and Charlotte, and Charlotte gives him the three bullets she still has. The mortally wounded French captain from the opening is Edward as an adult, who has carried the silver bullet since he was shot in the church. When it is taken out, he dies on the operating table. Years later, a grown Charlotte visits the elderly, bedridden John and returns the fourth bullet.
The post-credits ruling
Nobody has confirmed whether there is a scene after the credits.
✓ Spoiled safelyDog status: fine, no dog dies.
Questions people ask at 1am
Is The Cursed scary?
Yes, The Cursed is a 5 out of 10. It is a gloomy werewolf story with jump scares and some graphic attacks, and the unease lasts about a night.
How does The Cursed end?
John shoots the beast through Isabelle, and Edward turns human again as she dies holding him. The film then shows that the wounded captain from the opening is the adult Edward, who dies once the silver bullet is removed.
Does the dog die in The Cursed?
No dog dies in The Cursed. Other animals do suffer, since two horses are shown on fire and one is shown dead on the ground.
Is there a post-credits scene in The Cursed?
Nobody has confirmed whether The Cursed has a scene after the credits, so stay if you want to be sure.
What is the beast in The Cursed?
A werewolf-like creature produced by a curse that the Romani pronounced on the land, which targets Seamus Laurent and his family. In The Cursed, a bite turns people into the same creatures, and John melts silver fangs into bullets to use against it.
