Director: Jason Winn
Year: 2025
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Supernatural
Plot:
Needing credit for her class, a student takes her friends on a road trip to New Orleans, where they meet up with a fortune teller who reads their futures, but when they scoff at the readings find themselves under the effect of a curse that kills them one by one, and they must try to stop it.
Review:
This was an all right, if generally problematic entry. Among the better elements here is the idea of this one taking the idea of the curse afflicting them, starting from a place of genuine supernatural concern. With the opening setup bringing the group to New Orleans because their friend needs more real-life experience, and their ensuing partying in the city allows them to meet the gypsy who initiates the fateful curse after the group insults her powers, this first half allows for a nice bit of getting to know the group while this takes place. The events at the reading serve to put the curse in action, as what transpires after involving the series of supernatural retribution coming back for the group after making wishes for their heart's desire, before the contents of the curse take hold, is a rather fun concept with a lot to really like.
Equally as fun is the series of accidents featuring the curse coming for the group and taking them out in brutal fashion. That this carries along the fine tradition of knocking the group off in grisly encounters that resemble accidents encouraged through malicious supernatural interference makes for a series of solid and generally fun encounters involving the group succumbing to these graphic accidents. With one attacked in the backroom where she’s viciously scalped to the point of having her head ripped open, a friend is supernaturally possessed to viciously stab a victim, and one gets drawn to a vending machine that rips their arm off, these scenes are pulled off quite nicely with a nice bit of suspense waiting for it to take place while the violent outcome is handled well-enough. Overall, these give the film some likable enough factors.
There are a few big factors holding this one down. The biggest issue here is the generally sluggish and formulaic approach that renders a lot of what goes on here pretty tough to get into. Far too much of the first half is spent on the groups’ background relationships and getting to see the way they are around each other isn’t all that interesting and it just makes for a wholly bland time waiting around for something to happen, and when they finally start getting killed off it doesn’t affect them much due to the inability to leave their relationship soap opera dynamics at play. That makes for a more dispiriting time than anything else, with the film stopping the search for the truth about why their friends are dying to take time for a couple trying to make sense of their secret relationship instead, which is quite hard to rationalize and make interesting.
There’s also the issue here about the group’s failure to realize the truth about the curse and what’s going on around them. It takes them way too long to figure out that the curse has started when they get back from the trip and get on with their lives, focusing on the relationship issues or the group trying to get on with their lives to make their lives carry on the way they want to which makes the curse not feel as impactful or terrifying as it should when they’re not as concerned about it as they should. It also doesn’t help that the curse is quite hard to pin down, as it takes a revelation ten minutes from the ending before it all comes together into something concrete and coherent, giving this a rather difficult time to make sense of it all. Combined with the generally cheap look and feel to everything, these all make for a big enough time to knock this down.
Overview: **.5/5
An intriguing if overall problematic genre effort, this one has enough to be likable at best, with the series of issues that crop up keeping this one down overall. Those with an appreciation for this style or who aren’t bothered by those issues will have a lot to like with this one, while most others out there should heed caution.
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