Curse DVD Review

5th Sep 2012

Esan Sivalingam’s Curse has been in production for a number of years, which is not something that usually heralds good things for a film. The Singaporean horror follows an army unit sent on an ill-omened mission to an island in order to search for some missing soldiers, who have apparently disappeared without trace. Of course, the fact that the film’s other title is Ghost Island doesn’t bode well for either set of troops. As expected, bad things ensue.

Surprisingly enough, Curse is way more ambitious than I was expecting. There is a decent amount of characterisation, nicely acted and with a surprising intelligence. Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t going to be any kind of a classic, but the director has captured enough – in very short, restrained sections – for the main characters to actually make an impression. With plenty of running about and hiding in jungle undergrowth, the action is various shades of ok, nothing massively exciting. But there is some interesting camera work – some of which doesn’t quite work – but I appreciate the effort. There is also an un-looked for bit of subversion in the plot at the end, which always adds to a film.

Unfortunately, there are some elements that are all too familiar. It suffers from the Southeast Asian love for slapstick, clownish figures who bumble about, make coarse jokes and annoy the hell out of me (I was more than happy to see him killed off quite quickly). Although this is not a J-horror, there is definitely too much shared DNA – so, of course, it has a creepy child who appears at inopportune moments to scare the crap out of the jumpy soldiers. Some of the flashbacks to the provenance of the island’s ghostly inhabitants are also a little dodgy, despite some pretty good work from the purported ‘witch’. I also take issue with the fact that her ghost appears to be wearing porridge on her face (not the greatest make-up job I have ever seen).

With a nice interplay between the real and the ghostly, Curse is really quite watchable. The mix of Malay and English languages works well – the Malay flashbacks giving weight to the superstitions and hysteria of the locals in the past and the soldiers in the present. Definitely better than I had anticipated and worth a watch.