In the latest installment of UNBINGED we find that The Curse might make you want to look away — but you’ll be missing a lot. Similarly, Fargo, in its fifth season, allows compelling characters to shine amid some very dark humor, and Scott Pilgrim Takes Offis entertaining, but only for the already indoctrinated.
The Curse (Showtime and Paramount+)
A24’s latest foray into the small-screen space is the hard-to-watch but can’t-look-away cringe “comedy” The Curse, created by and featuring Nathan Fielder and Benny Safdie, as well as starring Oscar-winner Emma Stone. Taking aim at performance activism, The Curse offers a cold, hard look at reality TV talking heads and YouTubers who exploit the vulnerable for views and likes.
In The Curse, Fielder and Stone play Asher and Whitney, two DIY eco-friendly home rehabbers who want to get into the business of making the world a better place. Attempting to make Española, New Mexico, the city of the future, Whitney brings her impractical mirrored “passive homes” to market as the duo shop their show, Flipanthropy. Along for the ride is cameraman/producer Dougie Schecter (Safdie), Asher’s childhood buddy who has a lot of experience when it comes to twisting reality.
As he’s shown in Nathan For You and The Rehearsal, Fielder is an expert in conjuring tension and discomfort in an audience by using the distress of onscreen characters to maximum effect. In turn, Safdie is skilled at sky-rocketing anxiety by allowing his characters to make one awful choice after another and following them to their disastrous conclusions, such as in Uncut Gems. Together, the duo seem poised to take down society through one manufactured existential crisis at a time.
The Curse catapults its characters between soul-crushing scenes of disappointment and disquieting moments brimming with internal strife. From menacing music played over scenes of complete devastation…
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