The Curse | Review

Poster for The Curse

Harrowing opening sequences have been a staple of horror cinema, from the iconic POV tracking shot of a young Michael Myers stalking and slaying his older sister in John Carpenter’s original Halloween (1978), to David Robert Mitchell’s harrowing opening of It Follows (2014) and mutilation of a young woman upon a beach. These scenes set the tone for what follows in the next 90 plus minutes, giving the audience just a taste of the dread they are about to experience. Kenchi Ugana follows in the footsteps of the likes of Wes Craven or Ari Aster, giving audiences of his latest rollercoaster ride The Curse a shocker opening that will leave them buzzing long after credits have rolled. 

The Curse premiered at Fantastic Fest 2025 in Austin, Texas with an expected release of early 2026. The film follows Riko, a young woman working at a hipster hair salon, who notices her Taiwanese friend posting daily on social media, yet Riko has not heard from her friend Shufen in months. Soon she discovers that Shufen has been dead for months, and that a supernatural curse has taken control of her social media appearance. Upon reciting an incantation from her dead friend, Riko and her roommate Airi are cursed to suffer the same fate as Shufen unless they find a way to break the curse.

“I think this is something that happens all over the world,” says writer and director Kenchi Ugana about The Curse, “but in Japan these days, the amount of slander and abuse being leveled at celebrities by anonymous people on social media is so bad that I've always wanted to make a film about it.” Ugana continues, “A friend of mine told me that her friend, who was supposed to be dead, was still updating her social media account as if he were still alive, so I decided to combine these two things and make a film.” 

What works so well with The Curse is the non-stop thrillride Ugana crafts around this modern take on a classic curse. What if your friend, family, or even a stranger you have been in contact with is actually dead. Now you are on the run from that same curse that befell them. Ugana crafts genuine thrills and chills through his storytelling, with each scare sequence giving a jolt of energy like getting shocked by a barbed wire fence, only to follow up the scare with a wild special effect that immediately puts a smile on your face. Ugana says about crafting scares in The Curse, “I had a lot of fun trying out a lot of different things, and I think that's what the audience wanted too. However, at the same time, I think it was very hard for the staff, as they had to prepare so much.”

What audiences are sure to talk about, and be the recommending point of the film, will be the opening sequence that I can only compare to the allergic reaction scene in Hereditary (2018), but with a devilishly gleeful twist. “I wanted to bring fear, excitement and a little humor, and that's what this film is all about,” remarks Ugana. That is exactly the tone that continues throughout the film’s runtime with a horror gag almost every 10 minutes or so, and an unrelenting pace of scares and gleeful gore. 

Of course with this being a joint Taiwanese and Japanese production, comparisons to Hideo Nakata’s Ringu (1998) are bound to be made. Both follow a young woman and an evil curse. That being said, when asked what movie Ugana would pair with The Curse for a double feature, he was quick to draw the comparison himself. “I think it (the perfect double feature) would have to be Ringu. That film is about a Japanese curse personified through a VHS tape, while The Curse is about a Taiwanese curse personified through social media. I think the difference in time and place is very interesting.”

With Fantastic Fest come and gone, The Curse still sits at the front of my mind as one of the films from the festival that I am most looking forward to revisiting upon release. It begs to be seen with a crowd, and as a communal experience allowing for a collective GASP and release after each scare. As Ugana said of the film, what we want most from our horror movies is fear, excitement, and a little humor. That’s The Curse.