Is it Horror? “The Curse” (2023)
Mild spoilers for The Curse Episodes 1-6.
One of the more memorable scenes in 2004's The Incredibles (still the best Pixar film, sorry folks) occurs at the very end, when a supervillain called The Underminer (voiced by John Ratzenberger) drills his way out of the ground, sparking a supercharged Parr family team-up. The Underminer may be vanquished, but he pops up again at the beginning of The Incredibles 2, bombs, robot hands, and vacuum machine intact — proving, yet again, that you can’t keep a good Underminer down.
The Underminer is so called because of his appearance: he wears a miner’s helmet and comes from… you get the picture. With his ability to shift tectonic plates, he might as well be a presence in The Curse, now streaming on Showtime, given the degree to which characters go to undercut each other and themselves. Undermining, in all its forms, is what makes The Curse so damned compelling, and unsettling. These are among the most selfish, dishonest, hypocritical characters we’ve seen on television in a long time — and because they’re in such good hands, among the funniest.
The key players alone make The Curse must-see TV. Here’s a production from Nathan Fielder, reigning king of cringe (Nathan for You, The Rehearsal); the Safdie Brothers, purveyors of high-octane, heart-attack-ready films like Good Time and Uncut Gems; and one of the biggest stars on the planet, Emma Stone (who between this and Poor Things is killing it right now). It also has the imprimatur of A24, coming off 2023’s other best-received limited series, Beef. At the outset, The Curse may have seemed like a simple, if starry, poke at HGTV shows like Fixer to Fabulous, Unsellable Houses, and Down Home Fab. Those of us who braved its pilot and have stuck out subsequent episodes know it’s about much, much more.
While the show’s weirdness (and critique of reality TV) may have put off HBO, which produced The Rehearsal, the fact that The Curse exists is a hopeful sign for television. As everyone and their mother knows, there’s a serious lack of original material out there, in both film and TV; IP from films is regurgitated on the small screen, and TV is regurgitating its own IP (see also: Yellowstone cinematic universe). But The Curse is something new, something wildly original, and as freaky as it gets, we need more of it.
Of course, mileage will vary when it comes to Fielder. Those who can’t watch Curb Your Enthusiasm for more than five minutes before having to take a shower or a long, brisk walk probably won’t enjoy Fielder’s work. He wants to make you think, but his means of delivery is a double shot of anxiety. If you’re someone who enjoys squirming in your seat as people are placed in uncomfortable positions — like me — you’ll be all over it.
Mileage also varies when it comes to the Safdies, masters at ratcheting up tension and stakes, whose films play out in a muscular, propulsive style. If you were able to sit through Good Time and/or Uncut Gems without your blood pressure spiking, more power to you. That style isn’t entirely on display in The Curse (yet), but like Fielder, they have no intention of making the experience easy.
Fielder is Asher Siegel, a former casino employee who’s married to Whitney (Stone), the daughter of a wealthy slumlord (Corbin Bernsen). Asher and Whitney have invested in, and built, a series of passive homes in the town of Española, New Mexico in an effort to save the earth and bring jobs and prosperity to the beleaguered town. At least that’s the idea. Their ultimate plan is to document the experience on an HGTV show called Flipanthropy, which portrays them as the saviors of a mostly Latino, mostly poor community.
The cringe factor in The Curse springs from a variety of sources; topmost is Asher’s experience with Nala (Hikmah Warsame), a young girl he attempts to “bribe” in a parking lot with a $100 bill, as part of a staged moment in the show. When Nala reuses to play along and pockets the bill, Asher takes it back, causing her to “curse” him and setting in motion a series of events that may or may not arise from the moment. That night, Asher discovers his pre-made chicken and penne meal is missing the chicken; a meeting with Nala’s family the next day reveals that Nala may have had something to do with the disappearance, which fuels Asher’s belief that he has, in fact, been cursed.
Asher and Whitney’s year-old marriage is on the rocks from the jump, and there’s little to make you think things are getting any cozier. We have yet to understand what Whitney sees in him, other than, perhaps, someone with a vaguely entrepreneurial mind and his connection to TV director Dougie Schecter (Benny Safdie). Their good intentions aside, the passive house market isn’t exactly thriving; prospective buyers are turned off by one feature or another, such as the fact that you can’t install an AC and need to open a window to get any air. Whitney‘s determined to populate the neighborhood with the “right” kind of people (i.e. white, left-wing, college-educated ecowarriors), but the only one who seems to “get it” at the moment is Mark, a rugged guy with a pickup truck sporting a “Blue Lives Matter” sticker (played, in a remarkable feat of art imitating life, by right-winger Dean Cain). Needless to say, Whitney is not pleased.
For better or for worse, The Curse is one of the oddest things on TV since Twin Peaks: The Return (which also ran on Showtime). The Lynch comparison is not inapt. There’s a surreal quality to the show that lends it a dreamlike air. We float from one scene to the next, accompanied by Daniel Lopatin and John Medeski’s synth-heavy score. Strange touches abound, such as the cold open in which Dougie wakes in his car, unsure how he got there, and finds the car keys of teenagers he drove home the night before under a nearby tree. As a character, Dougie’s a slippery one, with an M.O. that’s never entirely clear: we know he lost his wife in a car crash, we know he has a thing for Whitney, and we know he harbors a mysterious grudge against Asher. Dougie’s take on reality TV is also strikingly dissimilar from the couple’s — he’s happy to just grab people off the street to tour the homes, which leads to some hilarious, and hella uncomfortable, scenes.
Where The Curse excels is in its skewering of self-appointed white visionaries who see their mission in life as helping those less fortunate, only for their plans to come back and bite them in the ass. As Whitney strolls through her neighborhood of expensive, glass-plated houses, she greets each resident by name. They regard her with suspicion — which, of course, she misses completely. When a homeowner decides to install a gas stove and throw out his induction stove (rendering his home “active”) Whitney flips out and decides the guy is no longer acceptable. When her parents (played to perfection by Bernsen and Constance Shulman) come to view her accomplishments, Whitney blows a gasket, telling them this was meant to be HER moment and NOT THEIRS — unmasking a not-so-subtle desire to distance herself from her father’s less-than-stellar reputation.
Asher, meanwhile, can hardly contain his insecurity at not being an ideal husband or host. He lies to Whitney repeatedly, including a scene in which he claims to have given Nala her money back (in fact, he gave it to a homeless woman and bought Nala’s home in an attempt to make amends). Told by a focus group that he isn’t funny enough, he attends a comedy acting class, only to come off like an unhinged jerk. His desire to keep Whitney happy plays out in a series of increasingly fraught scenes, from a bizarre BDSM ritual to a moment in which he goes ballistic on a couple that‘s passed on purchasing a home. He’s obsessed with his manhood, a fact that the filmmakers drive home with alarming shots of Asher’s urinating penis. Then there’s The Curse itself, which Asher tries to laugh off, telling himself it’s a TikTok trend; but as unexplained incidents pile up, he has a harder time shaking the idea.
By episode six, things are spiraling out of hand. Dougie is actively planting seeds of doubt about Asher in Whitney’s head, undermining her confidence in her husband and the show, which she’d like to retitle Green Queen. At a local fire station, Dougie encourages the firefighters to hit on Whitney in order to add a spark of marital drama. Asher may or may not be aware of Dougie’s machinations; he’s found a small pile of chicken strips in the firehouse bathroom and is determined to find out how they got there.
Is The Curse horror? I’m going to say No, but it’s got its share of horrific elements. Dread hovers over the show like a storm cloud. The score by Medeski and Lopatin sneaks in and out of scenes, catlike, suffusing moments with unease. Many scenes are shot at angles that resemble surveillance footage: we watch the proceedings through windows, from the tops of rooms, through plants and trees, and even, in one masterful instance, from the inside of a house as a woman sits and watches TV, seemingly unaware of the camera.
Character-wise, Whitney, Asher and Dougie wouldn’t be out of place in, say, a Jordan Peele film. They represent the worst of white liberal America, people think they have the knowledge and expertise to provide aid to those less fortunate, when really, they’re completely tone-deaf. Their actions come from a place of guilt, fear, and self-doubt; their need for acceptance and adoration, and to be absolved of their sins, is what drives them. Whitney may be trying to outrun her privileged upbringing, but she can’t stop ordering expensive clothes online. Asher’s social awkwardness and diarrhea of the mouth are constantly landing him in hot water. Dougie’s prior reality show experience is a dating show called Love in the Third Degree, in which women meet and fall in love with a man in a mask, only to learn after their wedding that he is a horribly scarred burn victim.
The signature Safdie tension finally rears its ugly head in episode six, with Asher realizing he may be the butt of not one but several cosmic jokes. In the editing suite, Dougie and Whitney snicker at a freeze frame of Asher’s face, the agony clearly setting in. Backed into a corner with nowhere to go by those he supposedly loves and trusts, Asher may be on the verse of imploding. Not only is someone undermining his marriage, someone’s stealing chicken from his pre-made meals. Hell hath no fury like a man deprived of his wife. Deprive that man of his chicken strips, and it’s the end of the world as we know it.
Postscript: (1) An “episode” of Flipanthropy was subsequently released on YouTube, and was as cringe-worthy as expected. (2) The Curse wrapped up in spectacular fashion with a finale that took nearly everyone, including myself, by surprise. It proved beyond a doubt that The Curse was doing something uniquely original, and was unafraid to go places traditional shows wouldn’t. The final episode was challenging and exhilarating, inviting comparisons to Twin Peaks: The Return’s unforgettable episode eight.
This is the latest in the Is it Horror? series, essays that consider whether (mostly) mainstream films and other cultural entities may be regarded as horror. Previous entries include Red Dawn (1984), Sarah Kane’s play Blasted (1995), and Bone Tomahawk (2015), published by Counter Arts; as well as pieces on The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover (1989); Jacob’s Ladder (1990); Scream (1996); The Impossible (2012); Beau is Afraid (2023); Netflix’s “Depp V. Heard” (2023); Society of the Snow (2023); The Zone of Interest (2023); The Beatles’ “Revolution #9,” Pink Floyd’s “Echoes,” and Portishead’s “Threads”; and the 2024 U.S. Presidential Election (2024).
