SnoopyStyle
In the small town of Downers Grove, Illinois, there is a well-known curse of one high school senior dying every year before graduation. Chrissie Swanson (Bella Heathcote) fights off football jock Chuck (Kevin Zegers) during a party and gouges out his eye. She has a crush on Bobby (Lucas Till). Her weird neighbor Ian is a friend. Her best friend Tracy is planning to throw a wild party with her little brother. It's days before graduation.Bella is a beauty with striking blue eyes. Her acting ability is functional. The same can be said of Lucas Till. He's beautiful with functional acting abilities. Zegers is growing into his villain phase although he's too old to play a teen. Actually, Bella is almost the same age but she can play younger. I can do without Tom Arnold even if he does fine here. This sets up a teen horror of some sorts. It's not the highest quality but it does have potential. The major problem is that the premise does not lead to a series of kills. The bigger potential is the mystery but it becomes an action thriller anyways. The 'curse' becomes a side issue and the reveal is not that surprising. The central premise might as well be forgotten.
michael-3204
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.
John Stutsman
Let me get this out right off the bat, there is no curse,, and if there is, they completely forgot that there was supposed to be a curse by about 15 minutes into the movie. A more appropriate title would have just been "Dowers Grove" as this movie really is a dower. The entire movie I was trying to figure out where the curse would come in at, but it never did. I'm also really confused why all these guys seem so into this girl who isn't even all that attractive or have any decent girlfriendish qualities herself. As a character she was very.... stale. I was confused as to how someone who took "conflict resolution" classes would think throwing a brick through the window of a guy who tried to rape her and is harassing her and her friends, is a good idea at all. Oh, and why oh why do the brother and sister insist on not telling their mother about what is going on because they wanted her to enjoy her vacation in Vegas.... that whole premise was laughable and unbelievable. In fact the entire premise came off as laughable and unbelievable. Honestly, this seemed like a movie that would be produced by and shown on Lifetime. There is no horror to it, just a very very poor crime drama. Really, no need to watch this.,. save yourself the time and mental anguish in trying to figure out what they were thinking.Oh and one more thing, no need to wait through the 9 minutes of ending credits to get to the final hidden "scene". Its just the same little non sense images that the girl was thinking through the entire movie, put together into one. Some of the imagery doesn't even make sense... such as the crow, the cross, and the church. This movie is just a big waste of time from the beginning to the very very very end.
quincytheodore
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.
AD
