Fantastic Fest 2025 Review: THE CURSE Mines Familiar Tropes for Effective Thrills

It can be tough for filmmakers to stand out from the crowd when it comes to certain horror subgenres, and it only gets more difficult when they give their movie a generic title. Writer/director Kenichi Ugana takes on both challenges with his latest film, The Curse, a late-stage entry into the J-horror canon featuring long-haired jump scares, gross gags, and an unavoidable evil, and he succeeds well enough to make it worth a watch.

Riko (Yukino Kaizu) lives an unobtrusive life hanging out with friends, working at a hair salon, and sharing her good fortune on social media. One day she notices that an old friend named Shufen has posted an odd photo featuring some kind of dark figure in the background, but when she calls a mutual friend in Taiwan to check up on her, she's told that Shufen actually died a few months earlier. Strange circumstances led up to her death, so Riko digs into things a bit more only to see her roommate targeted in a similar fashion. With no other options, she heads to Taiwan to confront the source of this curse before she meets her own deadly end.

Ugana is mining a mighty deep well here as he fills The Curse with plenty of J-horror tropes from the ghostly figure with long, black hair to the idea of curses built on hatred. He keeps things interesting enough, though, by adding in some creative touches of his own including a fresh take on the ills of social media and an ending that commits to the bit.

The demonic figure is genuinely creepy looking with its wide-open eyes and protruding tongue, and its presence varies from "harmless" visions to violent attacks. Ugana lands a couple strong jump scares with the being, and its effectiveness carries throughout, in part, because the film never tries to explain just who or what this entity is. To be clear, we learn why it's there and who's responsible, but the ghostly creature itself is just an absolute creep.

The horror genre is littered with movies about the ills of social media and the internet from the highs of Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Pulse to the lows of William Malone's Feardotcom. Ugana's film zeroes in specifically on apps like Instagram as a site built on lies that fuels insecurity and low self-worth. The message is pretty straightforward, but the film dials it up with some gory beats and aggressive scares.

Some elements of The Curse fare less well including ugly cg blood and slow pacing that bleeds over into the performances at times. It's one thing for the plot to inch slowly forward, but many of the performances are flat and lifeless when they should feel energized and curious. It's an odd approach and it can make the film feel even slower than it actually is before the third act ramps things up dramatically. Unfortunately, some audiences will lose patience well before then.

The Curse won't jumpstart the J-horror trend back into theaters, but fans of the subgenre should give it a spin. Its themes are timely, its scares are effective, and it goes out on a high (or low, depending on your viewpoint).

There's a choice made at the end of The Curse that will likely have viewers yelling at the characters on screen, but while it might frustrate at first, Ugana caps it off with a moment of bloody beauty. It probably won't be enough to save the film for most viewers, but at a certain point you just have to stop caring what other people think -- and dance like nobody's watching.