Liam Le Guillou is A Cursed Man, literally. He wants it that way. Guillou, a documentary filmmaker, decides that he would like to prove the existence of the spirit realm. This is all fine and good as this has been one of mankind’s most enduring mysteries. Many would choose a sojourn, or vision quest. Going the more salacious route, Guillou has decided that the only way t0 prove the existence of the divine is to search out the sacrilegious. Traveling the globe Guillou visits practitioners of dark magic, asking for a curse to be placed on himself. It’s an odd way to go about it, for sure, but we get a fascinating look into a world that few dare seek out.

Guillou’s first stop is to local southern California witches who advise him right away that his plan isn’t a wise one. It is here that we realize, with great candor, the level of conviction that many have for magic. After seeking and ignoring their advice, Guillou next heads to New Orleans. It’s a predictable first stop, but one that must be made. Here he meets two Voodoo priests and interviews several others. In one of the film’s more honest moments, an African-American Voodoo Priest points out the strange entitlement Guillou is exhibiting as a white man. The priest explains that while Guillou wants to know what it’s like to have a curse on himself, the priest says that he lives every day, as a black man, looking over his shoulder.

Guillou eventually finds a New Orleans practitioner to place a curse on him, but he feels nothing. The doc then follows our intrepid skeptic as he visits notable hotbeds of dark magic. After landing in northern India, where evil magic is outlawed, Guillou finds someone who offers to take him out to a remote location in the forest for a ceremony. The team pauses here to discuss the real world risks of following a self-proclaimed practitioner of evil into the unknown. This is where things get interesting and you start to suspect the results of such a pursuit. Is Guillou chasing evil or has it finally found him? Or, perhaps he is just careless. The film also balances Guillou’s journey with quantifiable studies on the power of the mind, and more importantly suggestion. There is certainly a commendable effort to remain respectfully suspicious, but open.

A Cursed Man is most fascinating when we are given very intimate depictions of ceremonies that are normally only mentioned in secret. We visit the birthplace of Black Magic in India, we witness a Voodoo curse being placed on our storyteller, and we even get to view a satanic Black Mass in Mexico. Yet, for all of the ceremony and visuals that we the audience and Guillou are witness to, we are never spoon fed an answer.

Guillou’s film is a classier cousin to the schlocky paranormal shows you find on Discovery. Instead of the clout-chasing talking heads and quasi-comedians commenting on unverified footage, we have Guillou on what appears to be a genuine spiritual journey. Don’t worry, there is a resolution, only not the bombastic, exploitive one that would make for good clickbait. A Cursed Man is an unprecedented look at the world of dark magic that proves we are all in the dark somehow.