The Curse (2023)

The Curse can test the patience. Scenes go on for an obscene amount of time, and at their frequent worst, elicit an uneasiness that makes some of The Office’s most awkward moments seem like an episode of The Repair Shop. But it is exhilaratingly tense, it ends magnificently and I found it impossible to look away.

In fairness, nobody’s all good and not everybody’s entirely awful in “The Curse,” which makes this show about the eminent fakeness of reality TV — and of so much more — ring truer than anything we’ve seen in a long time.

Fielder and Safdie prove yet again to be masters of wielding excruciating discomfort toward enlightening results. Don’t lose out.

A stunning television show. The ideas put forth are incredibly difficult to depict, especially in this meta-TV format — but the ways in which they physicalize these themes of class, gentrification, and the ethics surrounding them are bold and rewarding.

Fielder and Safdie have shown time and time again that they can create unconventional, staggering works, but together, The Curse is peculiar, confounding, and one of the most brilliant comedies of 2023.

Rooted in strong writing and directing from Fielder and David and Nathan Zellner, the three central performances – including Emma Stone's – push this boundary-crushing series to cruel and dark yet magical places.

Led by Emma Stone in what may be the finest performance of her career, it’s simultaneously choke-on-your-laughter weird and squirm-inducingly terrifying, the two climaxing in a finale of mind-boggling insanity.

Once again, it’s Fielder, a man whose face seems frozen in a flinch at the constant awareness of his own existence in this humiliating world, who makes the experience so transcendently uncomfortable.

Ultimately, The Curse is an incisive, razor-sharp critique of white privilege.

I found that the agonizing cringe and progressively disquieting nature of the series was really meant to be felt in full force alone in the safety of one’s home. When you’re at your most vulnerable, something about The Curse silently sneaks up on you; like the perniciousness of societal decay under the guise of progress.

There is so much to say about this dizzingly ambitious gem of a series, and yet saying too much would be doing the viewer a disservice (and defying Showtime's spoiler policy). As hack as it is to say about a TV show, it makes for a uniquely cinematic experience and one of the most original series of the year.

The Curse tears apart the artifice of reality television while simultaneously questioning morality’s place in entertainment. The result is weird, off-putting, and hard to watch, yet it offers an intensely compelling character study.

With its sharply uproarious and multifaceted ideas of entrepreneurs who are actually gentrifiers, do-gooders who might not be as noble as they believe, and altruists unmasked as narcissistic imposters, interlopers, and invasive speeches entering an eco-system that never asked for their charity in the first place, “The Curse” is largely brilliant capitalist and social critique. Mileage will vary, however, and perhaps your tolerance for Fielder’s comedic mien.

The twisted, distorted, decadent fun of "The Curse" is how much you'll recognize but won't like what you see.

Blending cringe comedy with contemplative character study and undertones of horror, The Curse is unrelentingly odd and tough to forget.

If you like your humour dust-dry and left-field, give this a shot.

For a series with such naked thematic ambitions, “The Curse” proves surprisingly moving, largely due to the depth of feeling that Asher reveals as his relationship disintegrates.

The Curse is a viscerally unpleasant and frequently fascinating place to spend time. Provided viewers don’t flee in abashed horror at which aspects of their own lives the show reflects back at them, I’ll be very interested to hear the conversations we’re having when the series is over.

Fans of Fielder’s comic work might struggle to find familiar laughs in The Curse, but the series is a deftly woven tapestry of tension. At its best, The Curse‘s surrealist approach edges close to the creative heights of another Showtime series, Twin Peaks: The Return. At its worst, the social satire feels a bit too on the nose, especially on the heels of an “Eat the Rich” cinematic boom.

It doesn't quite stick the landing, but "The Curse" is, like other Fielder and Safdie projects, a distinctive, unique, and weirdly unnerving commentary on modern culture, as refracted and warped as the mirrors that constantly confront its characters.

To its credit, “The Curse” never takes its foot off the pedal, to the point where we’re absolutely sure Whitney and Asher are going to crash and burn — yet we’re still not prepared for the inspired lunacy of the fate that awaits them.

The Curse is not for everyone, but in general, it’s a lot more approachable than some of Fielder’s and Safdie’s other works. The series features such precise filmmaking and multi-layered storytelling that it naturally appeals to many different audiences.

“The Curse” can be remarkably funny if one is on Fielder and Safdie’s cringe-driven sense of humor, which thrives on discomfort. Having said that, it undeniably spins its wheels as the season goes along, losing some of that sharp energy of the first few episodes.

“The Curse” is undeniably effective at creating a mood, which means every compliment to the show also sounds like a criticism. The show is a study of exploitation at all levels that’s often painful to watch. Whether that’s a cue to tune in or stay far away is up to you.

Co-created by Sadfie and Fielder, “The Curse” accomplishes what it sets out to do with gusto – amuse through embarrassments that make “Curb Your Enthusiasm” seem staid – but I could only make it through three episodes before deciding I didn’t need to subject myself to more.

Is it good? Remarkably — and also questionably. The first few episodes are tours de force. The middle stretch is impressive but repetitive. The rest — I’ll be honest, I am still sorting it out. The 10-episode season becomes more inscrutable as it goes on.

These are strange ingredients. None of it goes where you expect, and that’s a mixed blessing. The series doesn’t so much subvert expectations as activate questions before scrambling its uses of point of view in ways that sometimes feel more messy than meaningfully experimental.

In its early episodes, the show hits its targets with confident precision—it’s acidly funny and savagely heartbreaking. But eventually, all that sardonic miserablism gets the better of the show. Safdie and Fielder wander further into abstraction, suggesting that they’re maybe not taking things as seriously as they should be. The Curse carefully recognizes a fine line only to recklessly flout it later. The trouble is, I still don’t know if that was the whole point all along.

Stop me if you’ve heard this before, but like many series, it’s got too many episodes, becomes at times repetitive and the storytelling would benefit from being more streamlined. .... Stone is amazing. .... Whether that all adds up to making “The Curse” worth watching depends on your capacity to sit through that sort of thing. And your supply of antacid.

It has all the elements of a comedy, but it’d rather see us squirm than laugh, which makes it an intriguing but oddly uneven and unsatisfying series.

Each [of the characters] in their own way is a lot of work, and it can make the series, which is awash in tension even when nothing much is happening — John Medeski‘s electronic score keeps things on edge — a trying experience, even. Even as it remained abstractly interesting, I was ready long before the end to be done with the characters — but that is generally the case with Fielder’s schtick. For all that Whitney and Asher live at high boil, the show itself stays cold.

Although The Curse pulls it off in specific set pieces, the whole of it quickly starts to dawdle. The series hops unevenly between various plot threads — the curse, the TV production, the gentrification the couple refuses to call by its name, the strain on Whitney and Asher’s marriage, their ambivalence over conceiving a child, the fraying community support, a confusing and underdeveloped story involving Asher and a local casino.