La malédiction céleste

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!

A decent, but unspectacular late 80s cheesy low-budget b-grade horror feature starring Wil Wheaton (not too long after the hit movie "Stand by Me"). The peculiar plot is a very loose adaptation of a H.P. Lovecraft short story, and from that the film's pacing can plod about (quite talkie and then there was the family dramas) and throw around some ridiculous and elaborate occurrences. It's the performances that drives this one home and some icky, if tatty make-up FX work latter on (not including some very low-end special effects), but other than that there's not all that much to it. The idea isn't bad, but the execution (outside some well-shot scenes) is sloppy (like the use of slow motion towards the end). A respectable Wheaton makes for an agreeably sympathetic performance and a lively Claude Akins is the opposite as his aggressively headstrong, bible totting step-father. There's good support in the shape of Kathleen Jordon Gregory, Cooper Huckabee, Steve Carlisle and John Schneider. The setting of a remote farm does create a claustrophobic hold, where there's never a sense of feeling secure and surprisingly the night time sequences did draw upon some atmospheric spells. A fruity, small scale Horror/Sci-fi production, which can be a little dull.

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.

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!

The Curse is a grotesque vision of H. P. Lovecraft's "Colour out of Space." Most Lovecraft adaptions suck (save the Gordon-Yuzna-Combs collaborations), but I happened to like this one. And it looks like I'm in the minority on that. Why do people hate this movie so much? Yes, it has flaws. David Keith's direction isn't great. He's an extremely likable actor and he should stick to what he's good at. I feel like the prologue part should have been saved for the epilogue. It would have been a fitting end, it was not a place to start. Some of the acting is also hammy, mostly the supporting cast. As actors go, Wil Wheaton does a fine job, as does his sister. And they're the only characters you are supposed to care about. The mother character freaks me out as she changes during the film. Horror Director Lucio Fulci produced, and maybe influenced, this one. There are scenes of gore present that rival Fulci's own. Not of the "flesh-ripping" variety, but of the "lets see what disgusting things we can do to food" type of gore. The Curse is not a film to eat during. I suggest that you ignore most of the comments, see the movie, and make your own decision as to whether it's good or bad.