We meet Skye Riley (Naomi Scott), a pop star who had stepped away from fame after she struggled with substance abuse and got into a car crash, killing her boyfriend, Paul Hudson (Ray Nicholson). She has decided to finally step back into the spotlight by going on a world tour.
Despite trying to stay substance-free, Skye visits her friend Lewis to get some pills to help her back, which she injured during dance rehearsal. She sneaks out to meet him at his apartment, but he is acting paranoid and erratic. After a few moments, he starts screaming and ends up wearing that sinister smile while brutally killing himself in front of her and therefore transferring the curse.
The movie follows Skye as the curse grows worse by the day, blurring the lines between what is real in her mind and what is not. Her condition continues to worsen until she realizes that she must do something to confront the entity, and hopefully get rid of it for good.
One part I hated was how I could never tell what was real and what wasn’t. I know that the point of the curse is that it messes with your brain, but certain parts, I just genuinely couldn’t tell if it was real or not. Certain scenes and characters in the movie were part of her hallucinations that the entity caused, and it was difficult to know what was happening in real life and what was simply happening in her head. It was just so confusing.
I hate the music that Skye Riley makes in the movie. I could be biased because I don’t like pop music very much, but it is just such generic, energetic pop music. It doesn’t add much to the movie at all. However, I love the credits music at the end. It transitions from her bubbly pop music into a much more creepy sound. It plays eerie sounds of her crying and screaming with a strange beat behind it before transitioning again to somber music. I especially love how they cut different screams and mixed them together.
There were a few parts that just looked so edited, like in the end when the entity stretches her face. It stretches so comically and, while I love the idea, when it breaks her jaw apart, it just looks so CGI and fake.
Despite the movie being terrifying, there were a few parts that made me laugh, like during the speech when she thinks she sees her boyfriend coming towards her, so she tries to push him away, but she actually ends up shoving an old woman off of the stage. People falling is just funny. Also, after the entity possesses her, she is just shaking and choking on the stage while everyone watches. Like, why aren’t you doing anything, she is convulsing?!
I absolutely loved the flashback to her sitting in the car after the crash. It’s just such raw emotion! The helplessness on her face when she’s sitting there, the fear in her eyes while she’s looking over at her boyfriend, her tears really made me feel something. Also I adore her screaming while she’s crying, it’s so good. It’s also one of the screams they use in the credits, I love a drawback. You can tell right when she sees her boyfriend because her eyes go wide and her face drops, so good. I also love that her boyfriend is looking at her while dead, it adds so much to the pain and trauma that she’s going through.
Lewis’s last name is Fregoli. Fregoli Syndrome is also the name of a condition where a person believes that many different people are actually one person who changed their look or are wearing a disguise. That sounds like the curse, where the entity disguises itself as different people to trick the person. That is really neat. I love when directors put multiple layers into their work or hide easter eggs.
I absolutely love the part when she first gets on stage at the end, because when she sees her mother in the crowd, she reminds her to smile. The irony!
I loved the gore in this movie. My only complaint is that I wish the gore was more realistic. Especially in the end, I loved that when the entity comes out, there is a weird film over its face that it breaks through to reveal its terrifying face. I like the way they did the dried blood on Skye’s face when we flashback to the car crash, it looks very realistic. When Lewis smashes his face with the weight repeatedly, his face gets more and more smashed in, and the gore was incredible in this scene. I had to look away, it was so good. The scene with the dancers shoving a hand down her throat was so gross but so good.
A lot of the scares got me in this movie, which I loved. There were a lot of jumpscares in the movie, which can be good if done right, but I feel like it got a bit repetitive after a while. I did have a few favorite jumpscares though, like when Gemma (Dylan Gelula) comes over, and Skye is laying in bed with her and Gemma starts smiling at her. After a few seconds, Gemma’s eyes and mouth turn into lights while a car horn blares. Not only is it good because it builds up tension first, but it also plays into Skye’s trauma from her car crash.
I love the way her stomach scar taunts her the whole movie. She is constantly insecure about the scar on her stomach that she got from the car accident, even going so far as to turn down certain outfits because it could show her stomach. At the end, her scar comes back to haunt her as the curse shows up as a clone of herself and her clone rips open her scar to reveal the entity, coming out of her stomach. Even before the curse, the scar tormented her constantly by being both an insecurity to her, and a reminder of the crash. Then, it literally torments her by being the door into the monster.
The scene in which Skye is in the freezer waiting for Morris is so symbolic. She looks up to find her past self from the night of the crash, who unbuckles herself from the ceiling and drops down to fight Skye. She is literally fighting with her past and the guilt from that night, which has haunted her since.
Overall, 8/10 stars. I enjoyed the movie and the concept, i just felt like it was missing so much. If you enjoy horror movies that take horror to a whole new level of gore and creepiness, you will love this movie.