Sean Parker
Liam Le Guillou is not the type of person you picture walking into the homes of Hoodoo Priests in New Orleans and entering the caves of South American devil worshipers. If anything, the documentary director looks like the kind of guy you’d see on a Sunday afternoon visit to the hardware store or Target run. What I mean to say is that he’s the last person on Earth I’d consider calling A Cursed Man. Yet, he is, in fact, just that. Inviting the audience on a journey into magic, belief, mysticism, and energy, Le Guillou navigates the dark parts of religious practices, seeking a curse that will prove or debunk the existence of divine magic one way or another.
At the start of A Cursed Man, Le Guillou warns his audience about the residual effects of watching his latest film. The rituals and dark magic held within the video are real, and he reminds viewers right away that he cannot be responsible for their choice to continue. Le Guillou, who admits he doesn’t believe in these types of things, approaches this film with respect for those who do, and as such, his warning is somewhat pertinent. A choice to witness these events unfold or to walk away unscathed. I have to imagine the various shamans he visits had to speak with him to understand the gravity of where they’re coming from, likely the same way they speak to him about seeking the darkness.
I commend Le Guillou on what he’s trying to do with A Cursed Man, putting his soul on the line to understand some of the more vastly misunderstood faiths on Earth, attempting to touch the darkness and have it follow him back home. From my own spiritual perspective of skepticism, it’s wild to me. When Le Guillou talks with his wife at the start of the film, she calls him the Mulder to her Scully, in that Le Guillou wants to believe. I get that, and I think a lot of atheists want something similar. Seeing is believing, right? However, objectively and even scientifically, Le Guillou’s experience can also be tainted by such results. It’s the reason Mulder and Scully work as a team, because even wanting to believe can alter the evidence.
Le Guillou visits three very different dark art-affiliated religions. He first visits The Green Man in Los Angeles, where he meets with the leaders of a coven, then heads to New Orleans to meet with Voodoo Priest Divine Prince Ty Emmecca and Hoodoo Practitioner Sen Elias. Everyone he meets tells him the same thing, that Le Guillou is actively seeking to harm himself and express concerns that he shouldn’t continue. Witch Father Griffin Ced and Witch Mother Carrie Wolf are among the most benevolent and empathetic people appearing in A Cursed Man, and, to be honest, most of the people he speaks with present that way, but even they eventually agree to perform an enchantment over Le Guillou, assuring him that the spell is reversible. Even still, Le Guillou is satisfied to up the stakes, receiving a curse in New Orleans before going to Myong, India, aka the land of black magic, and Veracruz, Mexico, searching for a profound, perspective-altering shift.
As Le Guillou continues his documentary, he seeks out conversations with scientists and psychologists, seeing Dr. Michele D’Amico after his curses begin disrupting his sleep and causing precipitous trepidation over his daily routines. These conversations seem to be the most revealing to me as ideas of the human psyche and the powers of positive thinking become active conversational points. Could the call for a curse come from inside the house? The pressure Le Guillou has placed on himself to become A Cursed Man is also bleeding into the worry that something terrible is going to happen to him. Whether you believe in “bad vibes” or not, agonizing over when the next shoe will drop is as definable a hell as any. And as he continues his journey into darker magic, it eventually manifests itself in a physical way.
Le Guillou ties these notions together well. If you believe you’re cursed, then you may as well be cursed. Psychologically, these maladies have an effect. Yet, regardless of that, is it evidence of black magic? The fact that we can even ask that question becomes adjacent to Arthur C. Clarke’s three laws:
- When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
- The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.
- Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
These adages seem to be the jumping-off point for Le Guillou’s A Cursed Man and his attempt to understand beyond his own principles, philosophies, and limitations.
If magic exists, it has a lot to do with our own faith or fears about it. There’s still much that we don’t fully understand about this big blue marble we reside on, but like Le Guillou, I think I’d rather ask the question and try to unravel the response. Whether audiences feel Le Guillou’s doc contains a real encounter with dark forces or it’s a story of putting yourself in a stressful situation and putting faith in healing will be for each beholder. Still, it’s a provocative line to toe with interesting cultural insights, credence, and respect for those who don’t believe, as well as the most devout. The trailer will tell you it’s “The Super Size Me of black magic,” and I’m inclined to believe it, though I think Le Guillou’s approach is far more assuaged, as he’s more inclined to choose feeling better than continuing to make himself suffer.
On the technical side of A Cursed Man, Le Guillou uses high-quality cameras that capture the immense beauty of the idyllic remote territories said to house the most ancient evils. However, my biggest issue is that Le Guillou often frames voiceovers as if he’s about to go on a commercial break, and the film’s score helps to entertain those proposed cliffhangers. However, this is a nitpick in a rousing and immersive philosophical conversation that subtly seeks understanding at a volatile time for groups associated with the dark arts.
Just a few days ago, an Oklahoma man pled guilty to throwing a pipe bomb at Salem’s Satanic Temple. Le Guillou isn’t trying to promote one group or belief over another, but he is saying their belief systems are just as valid. Depending on what you believe, he could end up saving some radical thinkers from becoming cursed themselves. Whatever your viewpoints on curses and mystic evils, you’ll find something worth discussing in Liam Le Guillou’s A Cursed Man.
A Cursed Man is now available on PVOD.
A CURSED MAN – Official Trailer (Release Date 3/25/25)
🔥A CURSED MAN🔥 – Will be available to own or rent on Digital from 3/25/25 🎟️ – Pre-Order Apple TV – https://tinyurl.com/5cydfpxz 🎟️ – Amazon Prime – (Coming Soon) Documentary filmmaker Liam Le Guillou enters the world of witchcraft: and the occult, searching for an answer to the question “is magic real?”
