Fantastic Fest 25: “The Curse” is Aughts Throwback Horror
In 2023, director Kenichi Ugana first came to Fantastic Fest with Visitors. That film immediately put him on the radar of horror aficionados everywhere. Now, Ugana returns with The Curse, which will have its world premiere as part of the 2025 Fantastic Fest. His latest film feels like a throwback to the Japanese horror flicks of the early aughts. It’s a wholly bloodsoaked flick that, despite its clear inspirations, is firmly rooted in modern anxieties and tools for bloody murder.
Riko (), like all of us, keeps up with her friends through social media. While she may not talk to them or hang out in person with them, she’s sure to “like” their latest Instagram posts. When she learns about the suspicious circumstances surrounding the death of her friend, Riko becomes increasingly convinced that the death has something to do with her friend’s Instagram account. In one of the photos, Riko notices an entity hovering in the background. From there, things get weirder and nastier, with Riko becoming cursed by the same entity that killed her friend.
courtesy of The Curse
The late-’90s, early aughts era saw horror movies like Ring, One Missed Call, and The Grudge. Each of these films was remade, to lesser success, for United States audiences, and this served as a means of introducing American horror movie fans to what was being made across the Pacific. All these films have a curse of some kind that works its way through the cast of characters. Ring has its cursed VHS tape, One Missed Call has a doomed voicemail, and The Grudge has a curse created when someone dies in a brutal fashion. The cause for the mysterious deaths in The Curse is, in a way, social media and the way it causes our brains to believe in a distorted reality.
The Curse borrows from these movies from yesteryear to touch on our current landscape, but it doesn’t forget that this is a horror movie. The people want blood and Ugana gives it to them right off the bat. The opening scene sets the tone. Things will be a little silly and over the top, but the script is deeply worried about society’s dependence on the dopamine high we get from social media. The internet angle allows for the threat to feel fresh, yet worrying. If the curse is transmitted through social media, is it possible to escape it? While The Curse is a little too silly to reach the peak of the Japanese horror of the aughts, there’s still something to love here. By the end of the film, there’s not a sliver of the screen untouched by blood. Which is exactly what the audience came for.
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