The Curse

At first when I saw it at the movie store I thought it was gonna be lame and boring, but something told me to rent it. When I saw it I was suprised. It was an enjoyable film to watch. Now it's not the best horror movie ever made but it was good enough to buy and put in my movie collection. So if you want a good creepy movie, rent it, it's worth it!

This movie is about a family living on a farm in the country: a husband, wife, and two sons and a daughter. The father, being an EXTREMELY religious type, finds out that his wife is cheating on him. Not long after that, a meteor hits the backyard (how stereotypical can you get?) and begins to pollute the water and the vegetables. Those who eat the vegetables and drink the water slowly turn into hideous, slime-spewing homicidal mutants!!!

Duh-Duh-Duhhnn! I'm guessing that maybe this meteor is supposed to be a punishment from God (or so the husband says.)

Everyone but the younger brother and his sister eat the food and drink the water from the farm. First, the fruits and vegetables start to rot/become infested with insects/fill up with brownish fluid. Next, the chickens attack the daughter, and the horse kicks one of the brothers. After that, the cows become sick and start spewing up maggots. By this time, the mother, who was infected first I'm guessing, starts to break out in these nasty little blisters. Eventually, she starts talking in gibberish, eats with her fingers and tries to stitch a cloth to her hand, then she tries to kill her husband. The husband puts her in the shed for the next few days. The next person to show signs of infection is the brother, who starts acting like more of a buttmunch than usual. A dog on their farm kills a traveling salesman's assisstant, and the wife ends up munching the salesman's guts. When the husband finds out he moves his wife to the attic. Meanwhile, the main character (Will Wheaton) tries to figure out how to save his sister from his now-criminally insane family. That night, his father finds him in the shed looking for his mother. Then he notices that his son has a backpack filled with evil, sinful, store-bought food. His father tells him he's unappreciative and tries to beat him. When that fails, he tries to kill him. The brother is able to hold him off until the house starts collapsing. A friend of the family comes by to save Will Wheaton and his sister, but Will says he has to save his mother. He goes up to the attic, and in one of the most creepy scenes of the movie, he watches his mother rot away into a puddle of black goo. He escapes just in time to watch the house sink into the ground, sending his unholy kinfolk into redneck hell!

I liked this movie, it WAS poorly acted, but it was far-fetched to begin with. There are some genuinely nasty moments that will make your skin crawl. For instance, after the chickens attack the little girl the camera zooms in as their eyes collapse in the sockets and start bleeding this nasty yellow goop. Or the scene where the cow's udder splits open and locusts fly out. Or the scene where the mother cuts open a head of lettuce to reveal it's putrid, rotting innards (and lettuce doesn't even HAVE innards!). The film is very dark in atmosphere and there is a sense of impending doom throughout the whole film, not unlike that of Poltergeist. I give it 6 1/2 out of 10 because the acting, other than that of Wheaton and Akins, was horrendous.

Don't watch this movie. Wil Wheaton has described how incredibly abusive the whole experience was. From his parents forcing him to do it, to him and his sister being overworked and put in damaging situation, to even sexual abuse. Oh, and his abusive parents spent all the money.

Just google Wil Wheaton and the title of the movie, and read what he said. But here you have some snipets:

"I told my parents I didn't like it and didn't want to do it. I clearly recall thinking it was a piece of sh-- that would hurt my career."

"The experience was awful. It was the worst experience I have ever had on a set in my life, by every single metric. The movie is awful, and it is the embarrassment I knew it would be."

"When you watch The Curse, you are watching two children, me and my sister, who were abused on a daily basis. The production did not follow a single labor law. They worked us for twelve hours a day, (...) without any breaks, five days a week"

"I was inappropriately touched by two different adults during production. I knew it was wrong, but I was so scared and ashamed, and I felt so unsupported, I didn't tell anyone. I knew my dad wouldn't believe me, and my mother would blame me. Anything to keep the production happy, that's what she did."

"My sister is in a scene where she goes to get eggs from some chickens, and they attack her. So they hired Lucio Fulci, the Italian horror master, to direct her sequence. His idea, which everyone was totally on board with, was to throw chickens at my sister. Live chickens, live roosters, live birds. Just throw them at a nine-year-old girl. Oh, and then tie them to her arms and legs so they'll peck her. All of this happened under my mother's observation, and with her full participation."

"The makeup department decided they would literally cut my little sister's face with a scalpel, in three places, and put bandages over them."

"As I predicted and feared, this piece of -- movie cashed me out of respectable films forever. I got offers for movies, but they were always mindless comedies or exploitative horror films. They were never the serious dramas I wanted to work in after Stand by Me."

And there's more to it. Go read it.

Truly disturbing to see how children can be treated in Hollywood. No one to look after them.

Seriously. Shame on the director, the make-up crew, and all the production, the studio executives, and Wheaton's parents. Oh, and Fulci too.

I love this movie, I watch it all the time. When I first saw it on HBO around the time it first came out 87-88 it scared the hell out of me. The thing I think that really scared me about this movie was how in the beginning all the character seemed so innocent, so pure. then all of a sudden they started acting acting crazy, losing their minds and starting doing all these weird things. The character that frightened me the most was Frances. That whole thing about the water being contaminated freaked me out alot when I was little. After seeing this movie I was afraid to drink water for a long time. this film gave me nightmares for weeks. I would say that I was traumitized a little by this movie as a kid. I loved horror movie back then and still do. But this has to be one of the only movies that truly scared me. I finally saw this movie again a few years ago. And I wasn't scared of it anymore. I thought I might be. But I wasn't. Instead of being scared when I saw it, this time I laughed my ass off. The funniest part in the movie has to be the part when Frances plays connect th dots on cyrus's butt. Thats one of the coolest things I've ever seen done in a movie. I laugh everytime. So I recommend this to anyone who like cheesy 80's horror movies. but remember you probably won't want to drink any water for a while after seeing this movie, cause i know I didn't. Watch this movie!

There certainly are elements in this film that could have been left out, and the film would have been better off for it; why the cheap monster/demon makeup?(The increasing blisters are great though..) Why having that obnoxious fatso-brother appear in the film at all? And let's face it, the special effects in places were not exactly state of the art either, neither were the editing. So why give it an 8 then? Well my rating couldn't have been any lower, and this is based solely on the fact that the film positively reeks of unique and creepy atmosphere, atmosphere so dark that I put it up there with the Kane-scenes in "Poltergeist 2", and the atmosphere in "Exorcist 3". There truly are some psychotic and memorable scenes. Two that stands out are when the mother of the family tries to " connect the dots" on Cyrus's back, the other is when she sits quietly in the living-room sowing, and then starts to jam the needle and thread into her hands! Excellent! Not to mention the infested fruit and vegetables! All in all,there is in this film a disturbed and unsettling tension that you seldom get to witness in other horror flicks of the same decade, and certainly not in contemporary and crappy Hollywood blockbusters, that's for sure. If you are just curious, rent! If you are a true horror-fan, buy!