Running Time: 95 Minutes
Starring: Yukino Kaizu, YU, Yutaka Kyan, Tammy Lin, Mimi Shao, Ray Fan, Mondo Otani, Wan-Hao Chen, Yuhei Shirakawa, Raion Yoza
Having made features for nearly a decade, Kenichi Ugana has never failed to show his clear love for horror films. My experience with the director has been with 2023's Visitors (Complete Edition) and this year's informatively titled, I Fell in Love with a Z-Grade Director in Brooklyn. Both of those standout features wove that beating heart of a horror fan with touching emotion. The Curse marks a change in gears, focusing firstly on being an outright horror film.
The story opens with a familiar sight of the genre, as a woman tries escaping something unseen to viewers by running for her life. She does not get far, as her life comes to an end thanks to an unobservant truck driver. Yet, death is not the end of this torment, as the aftermath sees her body devoured by a wild dog while her severed head is trapped within the truck's wheel arch. It is a memorably brutal way to set the tone for the audience.
Viewers are then introduced to Riko, a young woman who works at a hair salon and spends her free time scrolling through social media. She is taken aback by a friend's strange post, which has a strangely hostile caption paired with an image where a creature lurks in the background. Wishing to know that her friend is alright, Riko calls her ex-boyfriend, Jiahao, only to be told that their mutual friend died in an unnatural way six months ago. Who has been updating the deceased friend's social media? And is it caused by a curse affecting influencers?
Intent on updating a curse formula, Ugana delivers something akin to The Ring or Ju-On: The Grudge for Instagram users. The familiar elements are throughout, whether it is a homeless man acting as a harbinger of doom, or long black hair appearing as a warning sign. A creepiness is evident at times, with an unsettling highlight being the video which depicts the curse, although one wishes that these elements appeared more often instead of less effective moments involving distracting visual effects.
Central to it is Riko, who must reconnect with her helpful ex-boyfriend as they work towards hopefully stopping this curse. When she is observing this curse's effects on somebody else, the effect is more spine-chilling compared to when seeing it through her perspective. While the former offers more atmosphere, the latter guilty offers more jump-scares to less effective results.
The online elements lead the material to tackle constantly relevant themes including social media and online obsession, but what we are presented feels sadly familiar. There is little to the themes that feels fresh, while the overall film feels barely distinguishable from hallmarks of the subgenre. At least there are effective kills, particularly in the final act, but these are not enough to sustain The Curse.
The Curse played at Fantastic Fest 2025
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