The Curse of Downers Grove

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.

It amazes me how so many people posting reviews obviously have so little experience in the genres they review. As for winning Oscars and selling out theaters no this is not for you. As an individual who watches almost anything horror or fantasy they can get their hands I was VERY pleasantly surprised by this film. It brought to mind a blend of Donnie Darko and It Follows, not reaching the heights of either film but portraying a feeling of the atmosphere that both did so well. Sifting through Indies of this genre with no prior knowledge of the film you are watching can be very disappointing. I would say that one out of every 30 would come close to the quality of this film. The acting was great all around minus Tom Arnold, if you want to name drop you can do MUCH better even on a small budget. I especially liked Penelope Mitchell (also from Hemlock Grove, great series). IF you are a fan of this genre give this one a chance it may surprise you, If you're an Oscar hoe rewatch The Iron Lady and stay off the boards of Indies

Not sure why so many gave this movie a bad review and low rating. For me, it was exactly what I expected it to be - a high school thriller, with a good story, credible performances etc. It wasn't what I expected but that was due to the title, trailer and premise of the film focusing on the "curse", when in fact, in my opinion, there is a whole other story portrayed. Had it been titled something other than it was, perhaps more people would have appreciated it more?

The performances from Bella Heathcote and Kevin Zegers were spot on. Other reviewers have focused on their real ages with regards to playing high school/college students but that is par for the course in movies these days.

All in all, an enjoyable movie if you like high school drama.

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.

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.