The occult documentary “A Cursed Man” arrives on VOD on Tuesday, March 25. When the trailer for the film was first released, I was intrigued by its concept but had my reservations. I worried that filmmaker Liam Le Guillou would sensationalize the occult practices he encountered on his mission to find the answer to the question, “Is magic real?” Instead, Le Guillou takes us on a deeply personal journey that starts in Los Angeles, CA and finds its way to the far reaches of India and the southernmost parts of Mexico, searching for magical practitioners that can help him answer questions more profound than “Is magic real?”
At the start of the film, Le Guillou’s mission seems clear. Take a quasi-scientific approach to determining if magic is real by having practitioners of some of the world’s darkest magic put a curse, hex, or similar spell on him. A task he quickly learns isn’t as easy as it sounds.
Le Guillou makes his way across the country and eventually around the world, meeting with Witches in California, Voodoo practitioners in New Orleans, Tantrics in India, and a Satanist Shaman in Mexico. With each destination and practitioner he meets, Le Guillou is met with resistance, even jokingly being told at his first stop, “We could curse you with stupidity, but we think you’ve got that down.”
Le Guillou’s stupidity, or stubbornness in his quest to prove the existence of magic, was something that irritated me as a viewer early on, as he’s warned of the dangers he faces if he finds someone that will go through with cursing him, potentially coming at the cost of health, wealth, or even mortality. But at each stop, we get an engaging exploration of darkness and light from the perspective of different cultures and belief systems, and through the journey, we see the filmmaker look deeper into himself to try and better understand the drive behind his research.
Along the way, Le Guillou also interviews psychologists and scientists who study the real-world effects of magic and the power of belief and even taps into his own psyche once he’s cursed to determine if perhaps magic’s true power comes from the mind of the person it’s impacting.
Ultimately, Le Guillou pulls the plug on the experiment due to fears of the long-term impacts on his health, whether that be a result of the curse or his psyche. This leaves the answer to the question “Is magic real?” inconclusive, and we’re left with a documentary that’s more about the filmmakers’ personal journey to find a door to something that was first opened during a past near-death experience, which is revealed much later in the film.
While the film doesn’t achieve what it set out to, it still offers a fascinating look at these darker beliefs from around the globe and some interesting perspectives on magic and psychological influence through both the spiritual and scientific lenses.
If you’re in the L.A. area, “A Cursed Man” will have a free screening at the Fine Arts Theatre in Beverly Hills on Saturday, March 22. The screening will be followed by a Q&A with the filmmakers. Visit Eventbrite for more information.
