Curve (2015)

2015
Directed by Iain Softley
Starring Julianne Hough and Teddy Sears

Alright, folks, time for some off-topic bitching. 

The Lick Ness Monster is a huge pro wrestling fan.  Having said that, WWE has just been an increasing chore to watch for the previous ten years or so, and I know that my sentiments are shared by a great many people on the great, grand interwebz.  There is no other entertainment company that I can think of that so actively goes against the grain of what their audience wants, seems to hold such outright disdain for anyone who takes their product more seriously than the casual Twitter reaction crowd that they crave so much, and can take performers that are white-hot over with their live crowds and make it so that those very same people don't care about them in the least bit within a matter of months.  Lo and behold, a lot more people besides myself are starting to tune out.  The ratings have taken a giant hit in the last year alone, dropping from the 4.2 million range all the way down to the 3.2-3.3 zone with regularity.

Fortunately, for 10 weeks every Spring and Autumn, I have an excuse to take the ol' Monday Night Bore off my DVR.  That excuse, of course, being my other guilty pleasure: Dancing With the Stars.  Now there's a hard segue.  I first discovered this glorious show after moving back home from college (my parents, along with seemingly everybody else in the 50+ age demographic, watched it back then), and, no joke, it's everything Raw isn't these days.  Entertaining, unpredictable, and satisfyingly scripted, the show is just 100% sliced awesome.  The fact that it boasts an endless array of gorgeous professional dancers doesn't hurt, either, as the current crop might be their best ever.  From edgy ballroom queen Witney Carson to Aussie stunners Peta Murgatroyd and Sharna Burgess, it's endless eye candy and talent on display every single episode.  Which brings me to one of the main things that hooked me on the show back when I first started watching, and the star of the movie in question today:  Julianne Hough. 

Insanely talented and certifiably hot, she was THE must-see attraction of the show for years.  Nonetheless, I followed her movie career pretty closely.  So far, I've been impressed.  The remake of Footloose pretty much sucked, but she was aces as the groupie in Rock of Ages.  Here, she's legit carrying a movie.  Regardless of the relative quality of Curve, there's no denying that, since she's the ONLY performer on camera for a good deal of the brisk running time.  That, folks, is probably the longest and most segue-tastic intro I've done in a long time, so let's get to the movie.  Be prepared, because this one is going to be spoiler-riffic.

This is yet another movie that more or less passed the theatrical stage and has gone straight to Netflix.  It's an example of "less is more" that isn't quite played to perfection, but it most certainly has its moments.  Here's the setup: Hough plays Mallory, a young woman on her way to Denver for her wedding rehearsal, traveling across the back roads of Colorado in her fiance's vehicle.  We learn from an early phone conversation with her sister that the guy she is marrying is kind of a dick: he's a career-driven person who is ditching their honeymoon for work reasons, something that Mallory is none too pleased about.  To say nothing about the porno stash that she finds in the car at one point, ramping up his unseen asshole quotient to the nth degree.  And then Mallory takes the metaphorical, Bugs Bunny-esque wrong turn at Albuquerque.

Well, Mallory's car breaks down after deciding to take the scenic route to Denver, and that's when random passer-by Christian (Teddy Sears) shows up.  After getting her vehicle going, he sends Mallory on her way...but something pushes her back to offer him a ride.  It's done subtly enough, suggesting that Mallory is considering this guy for a pre-marital affair.  A bit of pleasant conversation follows, and then Christian turns darker than midnight, pulling a knife on Mallory and giving her directions to an abandoned motel.  Noticing that he isn't wearing a seat belt, she attempts to kill him by driving her car off the road.  Upon waking up, Mallory is stuck inside the car, upside down, while Christian is outside, laughing, mocking, and ready to play a game with Mallory.

A good portion of the flick is just this, with Mallory pinned inside the car and doing her best to survive.  Again, I have to give Hough all kinds of credit here.  The material is admittedly pretty boring - it's your basic Hatchet level survival crap, as she lights fires, kills rats, eats, drinks her urine...you know, the usual.  What ISN'T usual is the level of desperation that she manages to portray during the whole ordeal.  Folks...she's completely believable in this role, and does a fantastic job getting the audience on her side.  Even moreso when creepy Christian periodically shows up again to laugh at Mallory and play more strange mental games with her.

It's weird.  Whenever Christian shows up, I think the movie actually LOSES a little bit of steam.  There's an old bit that I saw on Unsolved Mysteries about the case of Christine Scoobish, a mother who died in a car accident similar to the one depicted here whose three-year-old son survived for days only to be rescued when a figure believed to be the mother's spirit appeared to random passer-by.  That segment gave me a major case of the skin-crawling willies...picturing surviving in a similar predicament for days is just universally scary.  What ISN'T is the acting of Teddy Sears here.  It's just...I don't know what it is, he kind of Daniel Day-Lewis's this movie, overacting at some points and hamming it up at others.  While Hough is believable, I didn't think this dude was in the slightest, and he just comes off as a cartoon character.

Fortunately, the flick redeems itself in the final trimester, as Mallory is able to rescue herself and find her way to a farmhouse where Christian has been playing a decidedly DIFFERENT game.  I'll leave it up to you to discover how that turns out, but suffice to say, this flick has one of those stand-up-and-cheer endings, a rare thing in and of itself in horror these days.  So +2 points to the movie there.

Thus, while there isn't anything minty fresh here in Curve, it's definitely got enough to warrant a watch.  It's got some harrowing stuff featuring little more than survival techniques and a climax that pops pretty well enough to overcome its Dick Dastardley-for-the-sake-of-being-Dick Dastardley villain.  And it's got Hough in what I consider a truly star-making turn.  And since she was one of the reasons that I have a show that keeps me sane twice a year, she gets a pass for life anyway.

** 1/2 out of ****.  It's not a mind-blowing experience, but it's worth a shot.  Better than seven out of 10 episodes of Monday Night Raw, even.