The Curse of Downers Grove (2015) Reviews

• A Downer of a Film in Nearly Every Way

  in19842015-08-21

  2.25 of 10. Despite being a short film (the actual film only lasts under an hour and 18 minutes), it is painfully slow and stupid. If you're looking for something scary and exciting in a teen film, H8RZ is a far better option. If you're looking for teen sex, Staten Island Summer is the only recent film that even gets close to doing anything worth watching. Everything in this film seems so staged. When the teens do something smart, they typically lose out anyway. When they do something idiotic, they rarely suffer as a result. The story keeps being pushed along as if to fill in a minimum time gap. Even the credits crawl along for another 9 minutes with nothing interesting. Then there are the plot failings. One second they're in a town with the other key characters being in a town in another county. Next, they're all in a suburb outside a bigger city and a former cop living in the other town/county somehow controls the cops and sheriffs and a place that the lead character once had to drive a long way to is suddenly within walking distance. Finally, the end is a complete failure and forced simply to fit the "curse". It's hard to believe the writer of American Psycho could have supported such a poorly written and directed film. Apparently the need for cash is truly the curse of this story.

• Really Good Teen Thriller

  Mrssmiff2016-05-15

  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.

• Surprisingly good Araki-esque darkly humorous thriller

  SeanBatemanJr2015-09-10

  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.

• A fine movie that doesn't want to be categorized

  the_bluesman2016-07-10

  I seem to be one of the few who really enjoys this movie, even its editing, which others seem to hate. 'The Curse of Downers Grove' has a quite unique style of story-telling and doesn't fit into any traditional genre. It's a mixture of mystery, high school dramedy and revenge action thriller with an appealing cast led by the ever charming Bella Heathcote and a terrific Kevin Zegers. The whole cast was assembled aptly and it includes a couple of well-known faces. 'Downers Grove' seems to be advertised as a horror movie, but it's not, although there are a couple of quite gory scenes in it. This movie definitely is different from most others in many ways, much like director Derick Martini's previous effort 'Hick.' The latter movie is also one that polarizes very much. Many love it, many hate it. I enjoyed 'Hick' a lot and think that 'Downers Grove' is equally good and even more ambitious in some ways. The movie is a bit on the short side for my taste, but that is only a minor issue. I really don't understand why 'Downers Grove' is generally rated very low. The ludicrous score of 4.5/10 on IMDb at the moment certainly does't do the movie that I have seen justice. I very much look forward to Derick Martini's next project, whatever it may be.

• A hopelessly incompetent and irrelevant horror film

  StevePulaski2015-09-01

  I've lived less than five minutes away from the town of Downers Grove, Illinois my entire life, even going to high school there and finding myself going there for one thing or another on an almost daily basis. It's a remarkably unremarkable town, but it's one with everything one could need - a grocery store, a library, several parks, roomy middle-class housing, great schools, and low crime. It's the perfect setting for a horror film for the very fact that there's little that happens there and you'd be hard-pressed to hear the terms "breaking news" and "Downers Grove" in the same sentence. This is ostensibly why The Curse of Downers Grove has created such a buzz in my community over the last few weeks, with news of its release spreading through the neighborhood like wildfire. However, I was usually the one to crush the hopes of local residents and friends by telling them that the film, in fact, isn't shot in Downers Grove, or anywhere in Illinois for that matter, but in California, in a town that is so valley-centric and coastal that it doesn't even mirror the sleepy, middle- class roots of Downers Grove. Right off the bat, that voids a lot of the film's credibility; why even use a specific location for a story and not even shoot the film in that location? Turns out, the film is based off of Downers Grove, a teen novel by Michael Hornburg, who grew up in Downers Grove, Illinois and attended Downers Grove South High School, claiming to have seen numerous classmates die from strange occurrences over his years. In present day, I haven't heard anything about "the curse of Downers Grove," which leads me to believe, unlike high-profile Illinois curses depicted in films like Munger Road, this "curse" was simply something Hornburg could use as the basis for a novel set in his hometown. We haven't started talking about the film, and already, it seems to be bask in its own irrelevance. The Curse of Downers Grove, indeed, is a bad film, for more reasons than its false setting and entirely fictitious curse, which could apply to any town anywhere in the United States or the world. It's a film so hokey and ugly, without a shred of an idea of what it's supposed to do as a film, that rather than function as a horror film, or even a competent thriller, it settles for middle-of-the-road, soap- opera production and comes off like a dark Lifetime murder mystery. "The Curse of Downers Grove" is the justification for strange occurrences that always plague the graduating classes of Downers Grove High School (a school which doesn't exist in real life, mind you), where a member from the graduating class dies every year in some freak accident. With that, we focus on Chrissie (Bella Heathcoate), who believes the curse is a big hoax. When her mother (Helen Slater) goes out of town, however, she is left in charge of her younger brother (Martin Spanjers) and to her own devices. She decides to go to a party with her best friend Tracy (Penelope Mitchell), where she subsequently winds up being cornered by the star football player Chuck (Kevin Zegers) and nearly raped before she can fight back and poke Chuck's eye literally out. Now, Chuck's future as a football player is ruined and his entire existence shamed by his abusive father (Tom Arnold, who does some strong work at being menacing and downright vicious). Chuck is out for revenge against Chrissie, and because his father is a former cop, he's practically untouchable. He resorts to vandalism and taunting her, and she resorts to seeking comfort in the well-meaning but offbeat neighbor-boy Bobby (Lucas Till), all while trying to get Chuck and his football goons to leave her and her friends alone on the week of graduation, when "the curse" usually strikes. The first problem is editor Kayla Pagliarini seems to have so little confidence in the audience that she resorts to spelling out who to keep an eye on during the film and who appears unsettling through glossy and unwarranted editing tricks, particularly on one character, which just about ruins any credible mystery the film had. In addition, director Derick Martini and writer Bret Easton Ellis can't seem to figure out how they want to position this story. At first, with the commentary about the curse and its effect on people, it seems as if this film will be another Final Destination-esque teen thriller. It isn't until the film gets going, however, that you see it has little to do with the actual curse of the town, but with this side-story of Chrissie angering the football star and getting put in danger because of it. Martini and Ellis have no clue on how they want to tackle this story, be it through paranormalities, teen drama, mystery, or what-have-you, so the result is a film that's dreary and unfocused. The Curse of Downers Grove is about as limp and fickle as a horror film can be, as its plot moves along at a miserably slow pace, despite only being seventy-eight minutes long, and its characters are largely faceless. Absent of all tension, void of any compelling characters, loaded with undeveloped red herrings, and terribly misguided in its plot, The Curse of Downers Grove's only hope for long-term impact is the fact that it features the name of a close-knit Illinois town. However, because it wasn't even shot in said town, and formulates no connection to the roads, the landmarks, the people, or the foundation of Downers Grove, that part also has a very slim chance of making this out to be anything other than a seriously lame, irrelevant teen thriller. Starring: Bella Heathcote, Penelope Mitchell, Lucas Till, Kevin Zegers, Martin Spanjers, Helen Slater, and Tom Arnold. Directed by: Derick Martini.