If not quite in the top tier of 21st-century westerns, this supernatural oater from director Ned Crowley has a distinctive silhouette. First off, the film is beautifully shot, from the opening scene, which tracks back from a hallucinatory landscape until we see the source of a strange sound: a riffled deck of cards in a desperado’s hands. And its central conceit – a little girl (Emily Katherine Ford) whose touch is fatal – flowers into an intriguing metaphor for the consequences of the white man’s burden.
Except here the girl is, initially, a black woman’s burden. Formerly enslaved Sarah (DeWanda Wise) runs a homestead on the edge of an Arizona town in a plague-stricken time. The already on-edge locals shun her and her daughter, even though she keeps her child’s apparently deadly hands gloved. Increasingly ground down, Sarah enlists mentally shattered doctor Bender (Guy Pearce) – who ethers himself to sleep every night after his own family tragedy – to escort them across the wilderness to see a preacher to exorcise this dark force. A sour rationalist, he scoffs at her scheme – but he’s happy to take her money.
