Review of "Arthur, malédiction" - a horror film by Luc Besson based on "Arthur and the Minimoys"
A creepy reimagining of an old movie tale with blood, guts, and fan references.
Alex (Mathieu Berger) turns 18, but he's still obsessed with Luc Besson's Arthur and the Invisibles trilogy and surrounds himself with toys, books and even costumes from the franchise. As a birthday present, the friends decide to take the birthday boy to the set - in an old abandoned house, which even several years after the premiere looks like new. However, upon arrival, the company is faced with a frightening revelation: strangers are hiding in the woods near the cabin. They hunt the heroes down one by one and kill them like stray game.
The producers at Asylum, which produces cheap copies of box-office hits (Planet Dune, Terminators), must have been elbowing themselves to death at the premiere of The Curse of Arthur. Such a daring and at the same time vulgar idea could have occurred to anyone but Luc Besson. And yet, it was the legendary French director, the author of "The Fifth Element" and "Taxi", who wrote the script for this film. And the director was his young protégé Barthelemy Grossmann.
The classic's unique vision will seep into anything: both a cranberry spy action movie with model Sasha Luss and a low-budget horror flick about the Minutemen. At first, Arthur's Curse is actually a no-nonsense movie about traumatic growing up and the intoxicating power of pop culture. As the company of friends fight off unknowns (either evil minutemen or phantoms of the past), Alex gives up, step by step, the ideals and fantasies of a carefree childhood. Arthur's dream home turns into a giant room of fear. And the beautiful garden near the cabin is flooded with pools of blood. Symbolically, the first murders take place after the hero loses his virginity to his best friend.
If you turn a blind eye to all the fan metagaming (did Arthur and the Invisibles have any?), the movie becomes a conservative slasher. If you don't listen to the creepy redneck warning of danger, you're in trouble. Disperse in the middle of a massacre, you die. Besson, like Grossman, does not pretend to be a connoisseur of the genre and reproduces encyclopedic scenes from horror films on the screen. Sometimes there is a silver lining: torn-off arms and trap-penetrating legs wouldn't surprise anyone in another "The Wrong Turn", but are cringe-inducing in a fanfic about overgrown fans of "Arthur and the Invisibles".
It is true that the authors finish with a hell of a gasp, not having finished, not having thought it through, but in a rage against geeks and infantile fans of media franchises. It seems that by his cynical and strikingly caustic ending, Besson challenges not so much his studio past as his canned present with its endless reboots, sequels and remakes. What, in essence, is "Arthur's Curse" about? That if the characters had forgotten their childhood movie and celebrated their eighteenth birthday in a bar, everyone would be alive and well. A morning headache doesn't count.
This article was sponsored by Andrii Perenesenko
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