The Curse of Downers Grove (2015)

I don't exactly know what I was expecting from a horror film written by Bret Easton Ellis, but it wasn't this. To start with, The Curse of Downers Grove isn't even a horror film... or at least, not the kind of horror suggested by the publicity. Besides, The Curse of Downers Grove is based on a novel written by Michael Hornburg, so Ellis was only in charge of the adaptation to cinema; it's possible that the problems came from the original material. But it's still difficult for me to understand how the movie ended up being such an incongruous hodgepodge of shapes and styles. And the worst thing of all is that The Curse of Downers Grove had the potential of being an interesting film. The shortage of supernatural elements (depending on the criterion from every spectator) doesn't avoid it from portraying horrors of a more daily and realistic nature, such as bullying, sexual assault, police corruption... well; I won't reveal more than that. The point is that The Curse of Downers Grove deals with themes which are much more disturbing than any vindictive ghost or generic tribal curse. That's why I think this film would have worked better as a drama, in which said themes could have been dealt with the necessary maturity not to decrease their impact and social relevance; or maybe, it should have completely plunged into the mystic of the provincial superstition in order to create a darker and more psychological tale. I don't know; I appreciate the intention to deal with so many themes, but I feel that, when bullying and sexual assault are set in the same context as curses and spirits... nobody wins and everybody loses. The raw reality darkens the fantasy, and the fantasy is tarnished with cruel situations which can't be solved with an exorcism, or a sacrifice to some local deity. Sure, there have been films which perfectly mixed horror and social commentary (They Live, Videodrome); but The Curse of Downers Grove is very, very far from that level. On the positive side, the actors make a good work in their roles, highlighting Bella Heathcote, who faces the aggression from her partners and the hypothetical supernatural influence on the events torturing her with equal credibility. Pity that the screenplay constantly destroys her character's consistency; in one scene, she's criticizing the youngsters who make bad decisions, and in the following one, she accepts to attend a party with strangers of very doubtful intentions. That's the narrative laziness I didn't expect to see associated with Ellis' name. In conclusion, despite having some interesting ideas, The Curse of Downers Grove is a tedious and unsatisfactory film whose main problem is not having decided its intention from the beginning.

In many ways, this is the kind of horror movie that Wes Craven's "Scream" was supposed to put on notice, making the case that you can't get away with stupid, thinly drawn, overly sexualized adolescent characters who seem not to have a clue about anything around them. I guess no one told director/co-writer Derick Martini or co-writer Bret Easton Ellis how ridiculous making such a clueless film would be in 2015. Not that the film itself would have been any better in 1989, but the act of creating it wouldn't have seemed so inane.There is, at least, an intriguing premise -- that the curse of Downer's Grove is the death of one graduating high school senior each year. Exploring whether the curse is real, in horror movie terms, might have been interesting, or whether it is connected to some kind of revenge of the natives who once occupied the land. This is hinted at but never explored. But this film is too scattered to do that, instead dropping vague references to drug problems (never really explored or taken seriously) and thwarted ambitions of abusive fathers (never really explored or taken seriously). Everything and every character here is a cliché. It would be one thing if they started out as clichés and developed into characters we might care about, but they don't develop at all. It is perhaps unfair to criticize the performers because, really, what could they do with this junk?, but they are mostly pretty bad. Some of those whose work I'm a little familiar with, like Kevin Zegers, Lucas Till and Tom Arnold, have been much better elsewhere, so I'm prepared to believe that most of the rest can be better than their work here would indicate. Hopefully, this will be a resume low-light for them, rather than a career suicide. But if the pedestrian direction in any indication, Martini himself shouldn't get many more chances to badly mishandle any material at all.

A teen angst thriller at a high school gripped by an apparent curse that claims the life of a senior every year. Story follows a senior, Chrissie, who is skeptical, and another, Tracy, who believes that she may be the next victim. A complete useless thing to put Tom Arnold and Helen Slater in the movie and do absolutely nothing especially the mother being absent makes no sense also the acting is pretty horrible especially from the main villain Kevin Zegers although Lucas Till and Bella Heathcote killed it they were both badass. But the worst thing about the movie it was the ending probably the worst movie ending i've seen in a long time but other than that an enjoyable flick for what it is.

All right so in my understanding these is a movie about a curse that takes the life of one senior graduate each year. But this time it skipped or what? Because I could not see it. After a promising start the movie slowly becomes a big yawn. We follow the story of a teen girl who was abused at a party and manage to escape from the hands of her aggressor and not only that but leaves him with one eye. Now the guy torments the girl and seek retaliation. He wants to punish her for what she did to him and to hurt the people around her and also the ones who are trying to protect her.I chose a bad movie to watch tonight simply because it's a mockery for the viewer. At the beginning we expect to see a story then the film deviates from the topic and we see a completely different story. This is horror? Maybe for like ten seconds or so. Don't waste your time with these one, it has everything that we all saw in another movies and has nothing new to offer.