Taiwanese import The Curse comes to Fantastic Fest with some lofty expectations, arriving well after the height of the J-horror craze. Admittedly, there is a lot of fun to be had from that subgenre of horror, spooky ghost girls and all. From The Ring to The Grudge to Suicide Club and everything in between, spooky, often ghostly delights abound. The Curse is not at all dissimilar from the innumerable titles that have come before it. All the tropes are here—pulling a giant hair out of one’s mouth, bleeding eyes, long-haired ghost girl, imminent death. The scares often arrive abruptly without atmospheric buildup, undercut by inconsistent sound design and awkward scoring choices. The ghostly girl at the heart of the curse is frightening in appearance, but never explained, leaving her more as a vague specter than a fully realized entity. Still, The Curse provides enough eerie chills and specifically Asian flair to set it apart from its generic American counterparts.
A brutal cold open delivers a grisly kill that sets the tone for what will follow: a woman is struck by a truck, her head crushed beneath the wheels before a wild dog devours her corpse. From there, the film shifts to Riko, a salon worker who lives with her friend Airi. When Riko notices eerie new activity on the social media account of her friend Shufen, she is shocked to learn than Shufen has been dead for six months. Someone has taken over her socials, and has begun posting as the girl. In the meantime, Airi gets sent a mysterious video showing some sort of ritual using an actual photograph of her in it. Is she the next to be cursed?
Strange phenomena continues, and Airi spirals into madness. A homeless man warns Riko of danger before collapsing, seemingly strangled by unseen hands. Riko herself begins showing signs of a curse—haunted by visions of a long-haired ghost girl only visible to her. Seeking answers, Riko reconnects with her ex-boyfriend, Jiahao, as the haunting grows more dangerous. The duo embark on a full-scale investigation, running against the clock as Riko’s condition continues to worsen. The story taking the time to point out that in Taiwan, curses are treated very seriously, was an interesting tidbit.
Where The Curse succeeds is in its grisly imagery and an unhinged finale. The finale actually manages to push things into gleefully depraved territory. Thematically, the story nods toward anxieties about online identity and the toxicity of obsessive surveillance, though it rarely develops those ideas beyond surface-level shocks. Ultimately, The Curse scratches a certain nostalgic itch for late-90s Asian horror but lacks the patience, atmosphere, and cohesivenes of its inspirations. Its greatest asset is a willingness to go completely off the rails, trading eerie subtlety for bloody chaos. Sharply written but a bit empty visually, The Curse is decent enough when weighed against other like-minded J-horror titles.
The Curse latches onto viewers as it screens at 2025’s Fantastic Fest.
