The Bridge Curse

The staging and cinematography of the ghost sequences is slightly more creativa than average. So it's fun to watch.

This film is set on a university campus in Taiwan where a reporter is investigating the deaths of five students. They died four years previously to the day... on the twenty ninth of February 2016. Apparently victims of a bridge that has been cursed since a student died there some years previously. Through a series of flashbacks we see the students taking part in a test of courage on the bridge and what happened subsequently.

Early on I thought I might have picked a dud here but it isn't long before things improve. As a chiller it is highly effective; more than once it gave me goose bumps and the way many characters are clearly terrified creates a great atmosphere. Inevitably there are some jumps scares; I didn't find them excessive though. We do get some decent twists, which I personally didn't see coming. The acting was solid enough as were most of the special effects. Overall I'd certainly recommend this to fans of far eastern ghost stories looking for something made somewhere other than Japan or South Korea.

These comments are based on watching the film in Chinese with English subtitles.

Solid Taiwanese horror; tho nothing too original, it's done very well with some legitimately creepy moments, very fitting atmosphere, and a nice little twist at the end. Overall, it feels a bit like...Blair Witch Project meets The Grudge.

I must say that the concept idea for "The Bridge Curse" sounded interesting enough. And the fact that this was an Asian horror movie that I hadn't already seen, was of course more than sufficient to make me sit down to watch it, as I had the opportunity in 2021.

However, "The Bridge Curse" turned out to be a very generic horror movie, with writers Keng-Ming Chang and Po-Hsiang Hao just playing it safe and making use of just about every single trope and archetype seen in the 'how-to-make-a-horror-movie' manual. Sure, this was keeping it within the confines of what worked, but it also made for a very indistinct and bland horror movie.

The storyline was adequately written, but everything that transpired throughout the course of the movie was things already seen and done countless times in other horror movies. So there wasn't much of any surprises or innovative moments throughout the course of director Lester Hsi's movie.

The acting in the movie was adequate. But I must say that the character gallery was so mundane and generic that all characters essentially blended together and was just one massive, faceless crowd.

Ultimately, then "The Bridge Curse" is a watchable, albeit a very generic horror movie that packs little to no punch at all. I must admit that I had hoped for a bit more than what director Lester Hsi managed to deliver here.

I am rating "The Bridge Curse" a very bland five out of ten stars. Sure, it was watchable, but it was a very forgettable movie. And this was by no means a horror movie that can sustain more than just a single viewing, as the contents here just are too vague.

Amateur quality acting. Too hard to keep concentration. The movie would be way nicer, if the actresses scream less and act less childish. Not a single actor or actress acted like an university student, they acted more like bunch of school girls.

Waste of time.