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TIFF 2017

In writer-director David Freyne's film The Cured, Ellen Page and Sam Keeley are forced to navigate a world largely unwilling to forgive the crimes of zombies who have been cured

Ellen Page stars in David Freyne’s thought-provoking horror thriller The Cured, which follows the fraught process of reintegrating the formerly infected into society in the aftermath of a zombie plague.

In 2014, writer-director David Freyne released The First Wave, a short film about the outbreak of a virus that hijacks its victims' brains and bodies and turns them into zombies. But there was a twist: Where so many genre films fixate on the uninfected, Freyne introduced a cure for those who had been.

Three years later, and The Cured is Freyne's full-length follow-up, debuting at the Toronto International Film Festival. This time, Ellen Page and Sam Keeley are forced to navigate a world largely unwilling to forgive the crimes of the formerly infected. Tensions between the two sides begin to rise, and amidst themes that parallel our current political climate, the film also ushers in a chilling horror story that leaves you questioning your own moral compass (while reminding yourself to take some deep breaths). The Globe and Mail spoke with Freyne, Page and Keeley in Toronto about zombies, politics and political zombies.

There were so many distinctive themes in this movie – prejudice, classism, elitism, fear, forgiveness. What stood out for you the most?

Freyne: It started with the idea of what it would be like to be haunted with memories of what you did, but seeing it through trapped eyes [because] you weren't in control. And then it was about how fear is exploited in the world at the moment, how anger is exploited in the world at the moment by people for their own ends. And how quickly you can go backwards.

Page: What I felt when I read it was the amount of moral ambiguity and exploring the complexity of the situation and different sides of the situation. That, and the fact that it was a stunning screenplay.

Keeley: And it's such a fresh take on the genre. It's so relatable to themes of the world.

In the film, tensions rise between the formerly infected and their peers amidst themes that parallel our current political climate.

How did the evolution of the political and social climates begin to impact the way you looked at the film? Because between 2012 and now, we've seen so much change.

Page: It affected me because when we were in the last week of pre-production, Trump was elected. And I was going to work just like … I think we were all feeling not well about it.

Freyne: The second day you went straight off the plane to hang out with this wonderful boy [who plays Page's son]. And you spent the whole day with this kid in an arcade, and it was the day after Trump was elected, and it was like, "My world is crumbling, yet I have to protect this boy." Just smiling and playing.

Page: And the anger, to be honest! That was so – I'm sure for all of us – boiling at the surface.

Keeley: It did, but you live in the country. It's your home. We can kind of glance from across the water, and we know the ramifications of that, but it was a vacuum that sucked us all in at a very particular time in the shoot.

Freyne: But in a weird way, the world is crumbling, and there's something quite cathartic and therapeutic about being like, "We're going to make this work of art." So you try to do something that will reflect and resonate and hopefully stand up. You [Page] had Trump, we had Brexit, so things have massively escalated since we started writing the script. We never thought it would be as pressing as it became. Obviously, what's happening is a symptom of what was happening then, and we never could have anticipated this. But it certainly did feed into the shoot and pre-production.

Page says what she most liked about the script for The Cured was ‘the amount of moral ambiguity and exploring the complexity of the situation and different sides of the situation.’

And a zombie film is such an interesting vehicle because pop culture is always a gateway to bigger conversations.

Freyne: I think genre films have always been a great way of getting to the truth of society. For me, it's more powerful than a realist drama – it's got an honesty beyond that.

Keeley: You're also not ramming a message down people's throats. And it's kind of an afterthought from the people I've spoken to.

Freyne: What I loved about the screening yesterday is how everyone laughed and jumped at the right moments. They were just absorbed and it was a visceral experience and they're with the characters, and that's what we want and that's what we set out to do.

Ellen, you're in three movies this year about death. How did they change your perception of it? Especially in a movie like this where zombies actually come back.

Page: I think it reflects the time, in a way. Where it feels like a permanence is coming at everybody – in terms of climate change, in terms of politics. So I think it was natural that these came about. For me, especially with [Viceland TV series] Gaycation … in terms of meeting people who are confronted every day with a fear of dying and being killed because of how they're treated and how marginalized they are. It's a paradox on some level: It's devastating and freeing. It goes back and forth: like a profound fear, and then an ability to let it all go.

This interview has been condensed and edited.


The Cured plays TIFF on Sept. 16, 9 p.m., Scotiabank