The Curse of Downers Grove (2015)

A story that's too fascinating to pass by...

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

The film builds up the background with newspaper clippings during the opening. Downers Grove, a small town in Illinois, built its high school on sacred Indian ground and we know that is never good. Every year one senior dies before graduation. Curse or BS? The film centers on senior Chrissy (Bella Heathcote) who believes she is the next one. She has been having strange dreams and feelings. Her mom (Helen Slater) leaves for a week with her boyfriend, leaving Chrissie and her brother David (Martin Spanjers) home alone with less than a week to go.Chrissy manages to make a friend with Bobby (Lucas Till) a "grease monkey" and enemies with Chuck, a rival school quarterback (Kevin Zegers). Chrissy, feeling she is cursed, decides if she is going to go, she is going to do it "walking tall." It was then capped by a bad "B" ending for a half decent film.Guide: F-bomb. Sex. No nudity.

In many ways, this is the kind of horror movie that Wes Craven's "Scream" was supposed to put on notice, making the case that you can't get away with stupid, thinly drawn, overly sexualized adolescent characters who seem not to have a clue about anything around them. I guess no one told director/co-writer Derick Martini or co-writer Bret Easton Ellis how ridiculous making such a clueless film would be in 2015. Not that the film itself would have been any better in 1989, but the act of creating it wouldn't have seemed so inane.There is, at least, an intriguing premise -- that the curse of Downer's Grove is the death of one graduating high school senior each year. Exploring whether the curse is real, in horror movie terms, might have been interesting, or whether it is connected to some kind of revenge of the natives who once occupied the land. This is hinted at but never explored. But this film is too scattered to do that, instead dropping vague references to drug problems (never really explored or taken seriously) and thwarted ambitions of abusive fathers (never really explored or taken seriously). Everything and every character here is a cliché. It would be one thing if they started out as clichés and developed into characters we might care about, but they don't develop at all. It is perhaps unfair to criticize the performers because, really, what could they do with this junk?, but they are mostly pretty bad. Some of those whose work I'm a little familiar with, like Kevin Zegers, Lucas Till and Tom Arnold, have been much better elsewhere, so I'm prepared to believe that most of the rest can be better than their work here would indicate. Hopefully, this will be a resume low-light for them, rather than a career suicide. But if the pedestrian direction in any indication, Martini himself shouldn't get many more chances to badly mishandle any material at all.

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.

Let's get the premise clear, there is barely any curse in this movie. It only used as a pretext to shoehorn script made of Facebook cheesy one-liners from a typical teenager's page. The movie is shallow and barely presents any thrill at all, it merely produces predictable story with abundance of flamboyant dialogues that only serve as lackluster musing.Chrissie is a senior high school student at Downers Grove. There's a strange curse that a senior will die before graduation. It creates a sort of Final Destination foreshadowing at start, but this curse is far-fetched to say the least. The story is a straight forward, slow-moving stalker cliché and despite its relatively short runtime, the movie feels highly tedious.Chrissie uses monologues a lot, as in almost every five minutes. When she's not doing that, she's spewing commentary about life or religion. It's an effort to give this average brunette female lead some depth to her character so audience would invest on her. Unfortunately, her bantering sounds authentic, almost to the point of reading from cat poster.She even delivers monologue on the scenes where she has no business in. This gets old fast since it sounds preachy and self-righteous. It doesn't help when the other characters are too one-dimensional, probably in the exception of her younger brother who reminds me of young John Connor. The actors perform their characters rigidly and even though the movie tries to give mystery about them or the near irrelevant curse, you'll see the twist from miles away.For a movie with grim title of The Curse of Downers Grave, it is incredibly feeble and timid. I guess Cheap Scream Knock-off wouldn't generate any interest, but unfortunately that's what this movie is.