A Cursed Man
Directed by Liam Le Guillou
Unrated
Runtime: 1 hour and 37 minutes
U.S. VOD Platforms on March 25

by Joe Carlough, Staff Writer

“The norm is to be cursed. And so [what you’re doing] sounds, without being disrespectful, almost entitled.”

This sentiment, expressed by the Voodoo priest Divine Prince Ty Emmecca, is the pulse that beats beneath the exploratory documentary A Cursed Man. Documentarian Liam Le Guillou examines the question “is magic real?” by asking practitioners of different dark arts to afflict him with a curse. After meeting with a coven of American witches, Voodoo and Hoodoo priests, parapsychology scientists, Mexican Satanists, and Indian Tantrics, the director feels he’s found his answer–but I’m left feeling not so sure.

It’s an interesting premise, that’s true! Director Le Guillou feels he is a skeptic of anything magical, and takes an unexpected, but firm, position on what will change his mind: it can’t be anything good, because good things just happen. He needs to be cursed, and he needs to see the curse fulfilled before he can believe that magic is real. He’s looking for proof of an unprovable concept. Much like religious faith, magic being “real” is almost beside the point. It’s the belief that matters, an idea that Le Guillou will soon reckon with.

I found Le Guillou to be a sympathetic narrator, and I was happy to follow along his journey from the witches of his LA hometown, the Voodoo and Hoodoo priests of New Orleans, across the world to the mountain villages of India, and deep into the Satanic caves of Mexico. He treats all beliefs with reverence, gently asking the practitioners to humor his request, never appearing demanding or, frankly, skeptical of the reality of what he was doing. He eventually gets what he asks for–cursed–and begins to reap the, um, benefits of his new condition. Whether the viewer is left feeling more believing in the reality of magic (which I wasn’t, exactly), Le Guillou is certainly a convert.

I think the question this documentary asks more loudly than is magic real is why does Liam Le Guillou need to convince himself that magic is real? By choosing to become cursed himself, he makes himself the central narrative of the documentary, and we all (and by we all I mean we, the viewers, as well as the spiritual practitioners he visits in the documentary itself) want to know why this question is so important for him to answer. We eventually discover that he’s chasing a former feeling, something life-changing he experienced when he was younger, and I think that answers the question for me. I began to see this as not a documentary about magic so much as I see it as about aging. Le Guillou, an experienced mountain climber and downhill mountain biker, is terrified of slowing down. By his own admission early in the film, he’s settled in LA into a life he’s never had before: married, two cats, reliable work. I see his need to be cursed, his need to believe in magic as a way to relive his youth, to feel endangered, exhilarated, again. Maybe the real curse is getting older, and he just can’t believe it’s happening to him.

A Cursed Man is a good documentary: it left me with a lot to think about. As a film, I think it spreads itself too thin by visiting too many culturally different spiritualists in search of a curse. The one sticking point I didn’t think was explained well within the documentary was how do these different belief systems mingle? Does a curse mean the same thing to a Hoodoo Priest as it does to a parapsychologist? What does a meeting with the Tantric gods really mean to a person entirely outside of that culture? Can a witch coven break a pact with the Mexican Satan? The nebulous definition of “a curse” left me wondering, hey now, are we all talking about the same thing here? I also would have liked a more in-depth exploration of the power of suggestion, mindset, and what belief means from a more scientific standpoint. He touches on this concept talking to his therapist, but it feels more like a vague conversation than it does actual scientific inquiry, which would have been a strong addition to the film. By including only believers, Le Guillou sets himself up as the only skeptic, and I didn’t find him all that skeptical of magic to begin with.

There’s a lot to plumb here, and while Le Guillou does his best to present the concept neatly in one bundle, I couldn’t help but feel there was a lot left unsaid, and a lot of the points drawn felt a little thin because they were limited in time and scope. A Cursed Man has the makings of a great docuseries, the kind of thing I’d really eat up on Discovery+ (iykyk). I really enjoyed the time I spent with Le Guillou, and would be interested in knowing how he feels now, with so much time between this project and its conclusion. Maybe one day I’ll ask–and I’ll be sure to wish him well, because a good intention really is worth something, isn’t it?

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