The Curse, review: a strong contender for the weirdest show on television
The idea that there’s no room in the current entertainment landscape for the wonky and the weird is debunked by The Curse (Paramount+). This dark comedy about the unravelling marriage of an upper-middle-class couple in a rapidly gentrifying New Mexico town is bonkers with ribbons attached. At times, it feels the viewer is being keel-hauled at full speed through the phantasmagorical imaginations of its creators, Nathan Fielder and Benny Safdie.
Whether it’s any good is a different question. Fans of Safdie’s rough-hewn Adam Sandler thriller Uncut Gems will be cheered that the same uproarious surrealness – imagine David Lynch directing a clown show – runs through The Curse. In its first episode alone, a pensioner urinates into a tomato plant, and a struggling director shows off the trailer to his reality series in which a man with third-degree goes on a series of dates. It’s called Love to the Third Degree, a joke so dark it potentially isn’t a joke any more.
Weirdest of all – and that is saying a lot – is a bizarre sex scene involving Asher Siegel (Fielder) and wife Whitney (movie star Emma Stone), which feels like an outtake from a 1970s art house film that your local council tried to ban when it first came out. This is all in service of a meditative plot about privilege, the upscaling of neglected neighbourhoods and the white-saviour complex. The Curse might be the strangest show ever made about getting on the property ladder.
Fielder is part of a new generation of comedians whose speciality is an extravagant cringe-worthiness. It’s a club that also includes Netflix’s I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson and How To with John Wilson (of which Fielder is a producer). On-screen, he’s a mix of smug Jason Bateman in the original toe-curler comedy, Arrested Development, and Jesse Eisenberg playing Mark Zuckerberg in the Social Network. He comes to The Curse a year after the controversial HBO docu-comedy, The Rehearsal, in which Fielder “coached” members of the public through various challenging life situations – with the help of actors and purpose-built sets. Some accused him of manipulating ordinary people – though there was also speculation the whole thing was scripted and that the true target of his gaslighting was the audience.
In The Curse, his fraught performance is matched for erratic energy by Stone, as his spoiled, earnest wife. The daughter of a property developing family – early on, we hear them described as “slumlords”– she’s on a mission to bring eco-friendly houses to up-and-coming Espa?ola, New Mexico.
The problem is that these planet-saving dwellings are far too expensive for Espa?ola’s Latin and Native American communities. Never mind, says Whitney. Even if they can’t afford to live in the new houses, the town will become a nicer place for everyone. “We really believe that gentrification doesn’t have to be a game of winners and losers.”
In addition to re-making the property landscape in their own image like a sort of apocalyptic Phil and Kirstie, Asher and Whitney are shooting a lifestyle documentary called Flipanthropy for HGTV, a real-life lifestyle channel owned by Discovery. Flipanthropy’s director is Dougie (Safdie). He’s a rude weirdo who will do anything to get ahead in his career (Love to the Third Degree was his idea).
Dougie’s lack of scruples extends to persuading Asher to donate money to the daughter of a Somali migrant, purely because it will make for good television. But when Asher asks for his $100 bill back, the girl places a curse on him. While he shrugs this off, Whitney, concerned about the couple’s failure to conceive, takes it seriously. What if malign forces are out to get them?
The Curse needs to be approached on its terms. The humour is dark and unsettling; the tone melds social commentary with low-key horror (a rising dread permeates everything). It’s more impressive than watchable. Still, at a time when so much TV feels like the digital equivalent of fast food, it at least dares to be different. Those with an appetite for the strange and surreal will relish The Curse. But it is an acquired taste.
