The Curse of Downers Grove

I always look at the other reviews before I make mine, not that it influences my review, but just to see what others thought. First off, this movie bombed so hard, it hit the basement. 2 Mil to make and worldwide, it made a little over 33 thousand. Yikes. As far as putting this movie in the horror category, Eh, no. I'd have to agree with some reviewers that this more of a revenge movie. I'm a big fan of Lucas Till, who plays in one of my favorite shows, MacGyver. It was good to see at least one person I recognize in this film. I've seen much worse, let me tell you. I was at the very least surprised by the ending. Gotta say, I did NOT see that coming. All in all, it wasn't terrible, but not something i would recommend to a friend to watch. Peace. P.S. I don't normally do this, but I LOVE one reviewers comment about "It's all fun and games until someone loses an eye." That was freaking funny!

Every year a senior dies before graduation. This is the curse. A girl living in Downers Grove gets into an auticattion with another student on the lead up to graduation.

This has good production, good characters and great acting. The problem? It is as boring as hell.

The story is one of the most pedestrian I have ever come across. Yet despite its dullness manages not to be believable.

Without spoiling I would say that the supernatural element is very light.

The director and actors deserve more but this is just to dull to contemplate.

Okay, this may be based off a book by the guy who wrote "American Psycho" but this was indeed amateurish and humdrum.

What "curse"? Seriously, where was this curse?

The only thing I can give a great performance score for is Kevin Zegers 7/10. The female lead? Holy crap! Did she just finish film school?! She was monotone the entire movie. She was almost painful to watch.

The script? Whoever wrote this movie needs to go back to film school and finish their degree.

This was utter chaos and cheap. There is zero suspense and the plot twist was obvious, to me. This movie was all over. It will certainly curse anyone who watches this with the fact you can't get those minutes of your life back.

I knew this movie was co-written by Bret Easton Ellis but didn't expect much - I really hated the title, the IMDb score for this film was very low (which in retrospect seems really sad) and for a host of reasons I thought it was just a journeyman project for Ellis and it would be some kind of standard forgettable slasher.

The first thing I noticed was that screenplay was very literary and contained a lot of recognizable deliberate sentences and mean humor of Bret Ellis (sometimes it got a little too much, i think meth is mentioned like 3 or 4 times in the first 10 minutes of the movie). Then I noticed how surprisingly good the acting in this movie was. In the end a lot of elements in this movie were familiar but delivered with a slight twist and hence worked for me.

The mix of lo-fi look, acting style, dark humor and menacing atmosphere reminded me most of Gregg Araki movies like "Nowhere" but more plot-driven (another reviewer mentioned some stylistic similarities to "Donnie Darko" and "It Follows", but I think Araki movies are the closest comparison). Araki, of course, was influenced by Bret Easton Ellis and was probably the closest cinematic analogue of his prose.

I think it's a shame that in our age of faceless mass-produced genre movies this one, which has a discernible style, has such criminally low IMDb rating and recommend it.

Being from woodridge/downers grove, i went into it expecting scenes made in the actual town... or not just having one school, when there are in fact two. They could have at least driven down some of the side roads and used it as scenery... but no they make it seem like we are some corn field type town. Thats not the case. I was really disappointed in this movie.