[FrightFest Glasgow '26] FILM REVIEW: The Curse

The Curse - FrightFest Glasgow UK Premiere Review

Director: Kenichi Ugana

Starring: Yukino Kaizu, Mino Shao, Shiho, Yu, Lin Tammy, Ray Fan

Written by: Kenichi Ugana

Produced by: Tsuyoshi Hitomi, Hiroaki Saizu, Lin Ming Chih, Hiroyuki Takase, Zara Lin

Cinematography by: Moritada Iju

Original Score by: Hiroyuki Onogawa

Synopsis:

After her friend kills herself, Riko begins to investigate and uncovers the horrors of social media are tied to an infamous curse.

Thoughts:

A Japanese horror film about an infamous curse featuring a woman with long black wet hair? We've seen this all before haven't we? While Kenichi Ugana certainly wears his influences on his sleeve throughout the film, it doesn't come close to classics like 'Ringu' or 'Dark Water' but it's definitely worth your time if you're a fan of the genre.

Like a lot of J-horror from the late 90s and early noughties, 'The Curse' uses technology as the basis for its horror. In 'Ringu' it was a cursed videotape. In 'One Missed Call' it's a haunted phone call. Taking it's cue from Kiyoshi Kurosawa's 'Pulse' from 2001, Ugana elects to use the internet, or to be more specific here, social media as the medium by which hate and subsequently death is manifested.

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Yukino Kaizu stars as Riko, a beauty salon receptionist, who notices something disturbing about her friend Shu-fen's social media photographs. Unable to contact her, Riko reaches out to Jiahao and the pair soon discover that Shu-fen actually died months ago in Taiwan. So who is posting on her behalf? Airi, another friend of Riko's, attempts to confront the person behind the posts but she receives some horrendous abuse. The comments come, as is almost always the case, from a faceless tormentor who calls Airi dispicable names and claims that she deserves to die in horrible ways. And then Airi watches a mysterious video posted by the faceless fraud and her eyes begin to bleed. Airi has been cursed and eventually kills herself.

It's up to Riko, Jaihao and Shu-fen's sister to find out what is really going on here and how to stop the curse before anyone else dies.

Having been a big fan of Ugana's 'Visitors', a bizarre, hilarious and absurd horror-comedy from 2023, this was a must for me. Although he plays it a little more straight here, he still takes some insane big swings. And they mostly pay off. The premise may not be entirely original but some of Ugana's decisions definitely are and he doesn't hold back on the bloody surprises. It all feels a little bit Sam Raimi-ish. The pacing and editing are pretty good and the special FX are impressive with a few exceptions.

What I did really like about the film is the obvious analogy that social media is somewhat of a curse on today's society and that our obsessions with our small screens and doomscrolling really is like dooming ourselves to an unspeakable death. There's some decent jump scares and Ugana knows how to build tension through silence and lingering. It doesn't quite have the atmosphere of some of the films that inspired it though.

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One of my gripes is with the acting, or maybe the direction. There are some scenes towards the end that are very violent with lots of blood but the actors don't really react the way a human being would react to this. I can't really say much more without giving away spoilers but it got very annoying watching the characters just stand there and let things happen.

Ugana has proven himself to be a competent storyteller and while 'The Curse' was entertaining, particularly the kills and the shocking ending, it's not a film that will stick with me for any length of time.

Verdict: ⭐️⭐️⭐️

-Gavin Logan

'The Curse' received its UK Premiere at FrightFest Glasgow on March 6th