While public anxiety has slowly drifted away from the idea of the world ending in flame and fury, the public are increasingly concerned by more gradual and long-term apocalyptic scenarios. Polling suggests that Americans are afraid of shifting living standards, of the idea that their children will have a less prosperous life than they enjoyed, an existential threat to the American Dream. This is to say nothing of the threat posed by climate change and global warming; a 2009 survey suggested that almost nine out of ten Europeans considered climate change to be a “very serious” or “serious” problem and a poll from 2017 revealed that respondents around the world were more terrified of climate change than any other threat. It should be noted that scientists are currently arguing over whether the planet has reached a “tipping point”, whether climate change is still reversible or whether mankind has set in motion a creeping apocalypse.
These fears (cancer, the breakdown of social mobility and climate change) are all existential in nature. However, they lack the immediate “bang” of traditional apocalyptic threats like rogue asteroids or alien invasions or rapidly-spreading viral infection. Instead, they suggest that civilisation and society will erode rather than collapse, that the end of the world will sound with a whimper rather than a bang. This explains the fixation on zombie societies in modern pop culture, in worlds that seem to have already ended even if the inhabitants are oblivious to this fact.
The Cured fits comfortably within this subgenre. It depicts a version of Ireland that believes it has survived the end of the world, and can re-establish social order. Early in the film, it is suggested that the plague is being brushed aside; the United Nations is withdrawing from Irish soil, the rehabilitated infected have been released, those that cannot be cured have been contained and will be dealt with. It spoils very little to reveal suggest that this is a false sense of security. After all, The Cured is a horror film rather than a political drama. The audience understands that the threat of apocalypse has not retreated, even if society has granted itself a stay of execution.
The Cured suggests that the world has already ended, but that civic institutions are shuffling on oblivious. It would appear that the real zombie in The Cured is society itself.
The Cured
The Cured
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CinÉireann / April 2018 37