The Curse (2023)

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.