The Curse of Audrey Earnshaw is what you get if someone watched The Witch, decided it needed 30% more petty neighbors, and then asked, “Okay, but what if mother–daughter issues were an actual supernatural contagion?”
It’s a slow-burning, fog-drenched Canadian folk horror where wheat fields die, livestock rot, men brood, and women quietly run everything from the shadows while pretending they’re just “simple farm folk.” Also, at least three people absolutely deserve what happens to them, and Audrey is more than happy to oblige.
Let’s dig into this cursed harvest.
Welcome to the Plague Pit, Population: Everyone But the Earnshaws
The film takes place in 1973, though you could’ve fooled me—it looks like 1673 with slightly better tailoring. A small, isolated, ultra-religious agrarian community is suffering:
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The crops are failing
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The livestock are dying
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The people are hungry, desperate, and increasingly unhinged
And in the middle of this slow-motion collapse, there’s one suspicious little detail:
The farm belonging to Agatha Earnshaw is thriving.
Her land is lush. Her animals are healthy. Her produce is gorgeous. In another movie, she’d be running an organic farm-to-table business and charging $14 for artisanal goat cheese. Here, she’s obviously a witch.
To make things worse (or better, if you enjoy drama), Agatha has a daughter: Audrey, who the village doesn’t even know exists at first because Agatha’s been hiding her like a cursed Spotify playlist. Audrey is a secret in a town where everybody already suspects everyone else of something, so you can imagine how well that goes down once she’s discovered.
Agatha and Audrey: Mother, May I Hex the Town?
The emotional heart of the film is the relationship between Agatha (Catherine Walker) and Audrey (Jessica Reynolds), and oh boy is it messy in the best way.
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Agatha is stern, fiercely protective, and morally… flexible. Picture a Puritan Mother Gothel with a functioning work ethic.
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Audrey is young, intense, and clearly built for mischief. She has that look in her eye that says, “I will love you, but I will absolutely burn your enemies’ crops.”
Their dynamic is half tenderness, half power struggle. Agatha keeps insisting Audrey stay hidden, stay controlled, stay manageable. Audrey, meanwhile, seems very interested in being something else: a force. A presence. Maybe a curse with good bangs.
Is Audrey actually a witch? Is she an instrument of the town’s own guilt? Is she just an extremely committed teen with a talent for timing? The film has fun never fully spelling it out, but let’s be honest: whether she’s conjuring the doom or just surfing on it, she’s absolutely thriving.
It’s like a supernatural coming-of-age story where instead of getting her first car, Audrey gets her first blood sacrifice.
The Dwyers: “Nice Family You Got There, Shame About the Suffering”
If the Earnshaws are the witches (allegedly), the Dwyers are their unfortunate main course.
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Colm Dwyer (Jared Abrahamson) is a farmer whose baby dies, whose land is failing, and whose grief becomes a kind of walking poison.
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Bridget (Hannah Emily Anderson) is his wife, trying desperately to hold herself together while her world falls apart.
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Seamus (Sean McGinley), the patriarch, is the religious backbone of the community, the guy who can turn any conversation into a sermon and any misfortune into “God is testing us.”
Spoiler: it’s not God. It’s Audrey.
The tragedy of the Dwyers is that they’re not cartoon villains. They’re flawed, angry, devastated, and unfairly focused on the Earnshaws as the source of their trouble. Which, unfortunately for them, becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, because Audrey is the kind of girl who, when you accuse her of being a curse, basically shrugs and says, “I mean… if the dress fits.”
The film loves these little moral inversions: yes, the villagers are cruel and paranoid, but their cruelty sharpens the very blade that will later cut them.
Vibes, Atmosphere, and Other Things That Smell Like Damp Hay and Sin
If you’re looking for a constant jump-scare fireworks show, this is not that. The Curse of Audrey Earnshaw is much more:
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Slow fog rolling over fields
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Lantern-lit faces half in shadow
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Whispered rumors in pews
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Silent stares that last approximately six years
The atmosphere is the star here, right alongside the women. The muted color palette, endless gray skies, and muddy roads all scream, “Nothing good grows here anymore except resentment.” The village feels timeless and slightly wrong, like it slid out of reality a few inches to the left and never told anyone.
The horror isn’t about big set-piece monsters—it’s about:
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A lamb born wrong
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A coughing fit that lingers a beat too long
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A shadow in a barn
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The way Agatha looks at you like she already knows how you die
And when the violence does hit, it’s sharp, nasty, and weirdly satisfying—like the film has been picking at a moral scab for an hour and finally just rips it off.
Religion, Misogyny, and Blaming Women for Every Weather Pattern
Because this is folk horror, there’s a generous helping of religious fanaticism and misogyny in the mix. The men of the town cling to their failing faith like it’s a warranty card, and every unexplained disaster is more evidence that:
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God is angry
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Someone sinned
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A woman probably did it
Agatha’s independence, self-sufficiency, and refusal to grovel make her a prime target. Audrey, once revealed, is basically born guilty. Their success, contrasted with the town’s rot, becomes intolerable. You can almost hear the collective braincell of the village shouting:
“If our crops are dying and yours aren’t, you must be evil, not us incompetent.”
The film has fun quietly skewering this mindset. Every time the villagers clutch their pearls about witchcraft, you can feel the narrative side-eye: “Maybe the curse is your decision-making skills, Seamus.”
Performances: Women Carrying the Movie Like a Hexed Baby Goat
The cast really sells this gloomy little nightmare.
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Catherine Walker’s Agatha is all steel and sorrow, with just enough vulnerability that you believe she once tried to do things the “right” way before deciding, “Eh, witchcraft and secrecy seem more reliable.”
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Jessica Reynolds is fantastic as Audrey—wide-eyed, watchful, and slowly blooming into something dangerous. She has that uncanny ability to look both fragile and predatory in the same shot.
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Hannah Emily Anderson gives Bridget a rawness that makes her suffering hurt even as the horror escalates around her.
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Sean McGinley nails the weary piety of Seamus—you can practically taste the sermons on his breath.
Even side characters like Don McKellar’s Bernard Buckley and Geraldine O’Rawe’s Deirdre help deepen the sense of a community held together with old grudges and stale doctrine.
Yes, the Story Stumbles—But It Stumbles Stylishly
The main criticism people tend to level at The Curse of Audrey Earnshaw is the story: it’s a bit thin, a bit vague, and occasionally seems more interested in brooding than in explaining itself.
And honestly? Fair.
There are threads that feel underdeveloped:
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The exact mechanics of Audrey’s power
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The origin of the plague
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The broader implications of the ritual elements
But here’s the thing: even when the plot wobbles, the film maintains such a strong mood and cast presence that you mostly roll with it. It’s like listening to a ghost tell a story by candlelight—maybe some details don’t quite add up, but are you really going to interrupt and ask for timestamps?
The ambiguity also fits the folk horror tone: curses rarely come with annotated instruction manuals. They arrive with bad weather, dying cows, and a teenager who can stare through your soul.
Final Harvest: A Beautifully Rotten Little Folk Tale
The Curse of Audrey Earnshaw isn’t a jump-scare crowd-pleaser. It’s a slow, eerie, female-driven fable about:
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Grief
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Blame
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Inherited sin
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And the terrifying potential of a girl everyone underestimated
It’s the kind of movie where:
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You’ll want to wrap Audrey in a blanket and also never turn your back on her
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You’ll sympathize with the villagers right up until they say something unforgivable
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You’ll start wondering if maybe the crops did deserve it
Is it perfect? No. But it’s atmospheric, well-acted, and quietly vicious in a way that sticks with you. Like a curse. Or a very pointed family secret.
If you enjoy your horror with witches, rotting harvests, repressed rage, and the lingering suspicion that the women in town know exactly what’s going on and are just done explaining it to men—then Audrey’s little hexed hamlet is absolutely worth the visit.
Just… maybe don’t ask why her fields look so good.
