Review: ‘The Curse’ Episode 1
The Curse is one of the most painfully awkward TV shows I have ever seen, and ever since Succession came to an end, it’s the only worthy replacement I’ve found for heavy doses of cringe comedy and deeply unlikable characters.
Following married couple Whitney (Emma Stone) and Asher (Nathan Fielder) as they struggle to make a docuseries helping community members in the town of Española, The Curse is an uncomfortable dissection of how self-serving charitable acts become once they are turned into content.
Asher and Whitney are philanthropists, technically, but really they’re only interested in their own profits. The couple are hoping their show will be such a hit that it will cause an influx of wealthier residents to move to the area, significantly increasing the value of the properties they’ve bought there, even it that comes at the expense of the town’s residents.
In the age of social media, where anyone with a decent phone and a working mic can make an account sharing the good deeds they spread to strangers, a series like The Curse is sorely needed to cast a light on how duplicitous this tactic often is.
Whitney and Asher are compelling characters to watch because they aren’t actively harming people, but are aware that in the grand scheme of things, they are exploiting struggling people on their show to then make their lives a living hell if their TV documentary takes off.
It’s painful to watch their interactions with the locals, but what’s really impressive is the show’s keen attention to detail and tone. It does not need to artificially make Whitney and Asher out to be worse than they already are on their own series, and instead has crafted a show-within-a-show that feels like an earnest effort from both characters.
They are accompanied on this journey by Dougie (Benny Safdie), the series producer, who is somehow even more ruthless than the couple in his apathy towards these suffering people.
The camerawork is impressive, with voyeuristic shots involving frames-within-frames that make these characters feel trapped. One particular shot involves a zoom in on a peephole, where we see Asher and Whitney talking to one another. Since the scene just before this involved Dougie pretending to care about all the ‘good’ that Whitney is doing, with his obvious motive being to show he’s attracted to her, it’s natural to assume that it’s him observing them.
That is, until the scene ends, and we see Dougie open the door for them on the opposite side of the corridor. So who is watching them? It’s as if there’s a separate, unseen character in the show, who pops up habitually throughout the first episode. These are simple tricks, but these eerie and uncomfortable shots make the show feel genuinely haunting.
There’s also some great humour here, the highlight being when Asher is peeing. At first, it felt deeply unnecessary seeing Nathan Fielder’s flaccid penis as he pees, until I remembered that the previous scene involved a close-up shot of a baby carrot. When the episode continues into a well-meant but deeply uncomfortable conversation between Whitney’s dad and Asher about their respective small penises, the moment becomes even funnier in retrospect.
For some viewers, the uncomfortable, awkward humour will be too much, but if you can withstand that, and even enjoy it, I can’t recommend this show enough. Already The Curse has proven that its greatest strength is its ability to be as uncomfortable as possible in its comedic and dramatic moments, with a sense of unease that’s hard to shake even after the episode ends.
