We already know what happens in a movie about the zombie apocalypse. Society falls apart, survivors band together and tear themselves apart, the good and evil in mankind amplified under the moral magnifying glass of disaster. It's every Romero movie. It's every season of The Walking Dead. With his impressive debut feature The Cured, writer-director David Freyne gives us something different; a glimpse at society's attempts and failures to pick up the pieces after a viable cure to the cannibalistic infection is discovered.

For the sticklers, they're not exactly zombies in the undead sense, but closer to the infected from 28 Days Later (to which The Cured owes a healthy stylistic debt of inspiration). All the same they have absolutely ravaged Ireland, where people are trying to reassemble their lives with some modicum of normalcy after the spread of the deadly "Maze" virus. There, The Cured follows the third wave of newly cured citizens as they're reintroduced into society, plagued by the memory and fallout of their violent deeds while infected. The antidote has saved 75% of the infected, leaving the other 25% safely contained in prisons, where the pioneering Dr. Lyons (Paula Malcolmson) continues perfecting her antidote. The film centers on Senan (Sam Keeley), one of the cured Maze survivors integrating back into society, who moves in with his widowed sister-in-law Abbie (Ellen Page) and her young son. Besieged by guilt and plagued with nightmares of the things he did while infected, Senan struggles to carve out a place for himself in the new world.

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Image via The Cured

Meanwhile, the understandably terrified citizens of Ireland haven't aren't yet ready to love thy neighbors who ate their family alive, and the public responds to the integration efforts with intolerance and outrage. Discord sweeps the nation as anti-cured extremists take violent action against the once-infected, and in turn, a militia of the cured emerges who are willing to turn to their own violent means. Led by Senan's fellow patient and friend Connor (Tom Vaughan-Lawlor), formerly a silver spoon politician who doesn't take to his new life as a shunned second-class citizen, the newly organized group of cured survivors decide to fight back like the monsters they're told they are -- An unending cycle of violence, waged in battles between those who were once brothers and friends, and hinged un an unalterable truth of identity.

It's a fantastic set up for an unorthodox zombie thriller, and Freyne uses the construct to make clear political parallels. Because this is an Irish film set in Dublin, it's certainly easy to see how those lines connect to the country's history of violent political turmoil, but Freyne keeps the story broad enough that it becomes universal,  applying to anywhere and anyone being torn apart by violent extremism. Much of The Cured plays out like a taught personal and political thriller, wound up in intersecting lies and betrayals, which are primed to boil over into deadly violence at any moment. During the first to acts, Freyne keeps the audience on a tight string, nerves well-jangled, as Senan's conflicting allegiances threaten to dismantle his newly recovered home life while discord over the cured threatens to pull apart the nation.

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Image via IFC Midnight

Unfortunately, as the conflict between the cured and the uninfected citizens escalates, the movie becomes something more predictable and standard -- another zombie outbreak movie. It's not a bad one, it's just nothing we haven't seen before, which undercuts the impact of the expertly wrought tension that precedes it. Freyne shoots the zombie sequences well -- especially the moment where Page realizes it's all happening again and handles her business, axe in hand. There's a panic to the moment, a sense of wide-open vulnerability, that's met with Page's confident survivor's direction. All the same, the action-packed final act ultimately distracts and detracts from the well-laid emotional drama laid. The zombie action is fun, but too familiar, and betrays the intimate, pensive stakes on the line.

Zombie movies are in an unusual place right now -- there aren't a lot of them being made, and the one's that are almost always subvert the genre in a fundamental way. The Cured isn't quite the best from this new crop of post-traditional zombie movies, mostly because it choses to play it all so traditional in the end, but it is an engaging, thoughtful addition to the growing subgenre. More hair-raising than outright horrifying and deeply invested in character until its suddenly not, The Cured conjures up mournful, aching depth and functions best as a pulse-pounding political thriller, but ultimately does itself a disservice when it gets trapped in familiar zombie tropes.

Rating: B-