The Curve

Review

The Curve or Dead Man's Curve is a horror movie starring my love, Matthew Lillard which I think is seriously underrated. I had never heard of this movie before I started looking into the various movies that Matthew Lillard starred in and I'm so glad I found it because it was so entertaining.

The Curve is about two college students, Tim and Chris, who decide to kill their roommate, Rand, and frame it as a suicide in order to reap the benefits of a free 4.0 GPA. As the movie goes along, it becomes clear that Tim is significantly more insane and is trying to manipulate the situation to get Chris blamed for the whole affair. The movie ends with the twist that their roommate was alive the whole time and working with Christ to take out Tim and them pushing Tim off the cliff they pushed Rand off of.

This movie is a lot of fun because you're watching characters move around in this intense situation trying to make sure things work out in their favor and so seeing their subterfuge is really interesting. The movie has excellent use of Chekhov's gun, almost everything that happens in this movie, with the exception of the end twist, is set up at some point and I think that's really impressive. As the audience, we are mostly following Tim's plan to throw Chris under the bus and you bear witness to the impressively smart way that Tim is able to manipulate the situation and place Chris right in the way of the authorities.

The characters in this movie are a little insufferable but they grew on me pretty quickly, and the worst of the bunch, Rand, is out of the movie for most of it's runtime. Tim starts out pretty bad but you have to respect the hustle and the legwork he puts into trying to frame Chris, he thinks of everything and if it weren't for the insane twist at the end it's clear that he would have gotten away with it, it was almost the perfect crime.

The twist is the end is pretty absurd and it's not my favorite but I think the intelligence of the rest of the film makes up for it, everything else is so logically thought out and set up that I was willing to overlook this. It also helps that I was so shocked by the reveal that Emma was working with Tim that by the time Rand was revealled I was fully invested in finding out how this ends so the craziness of the whole thing didn't bother me that much.

Overall, this movie was a really fun time and I wish more people knew about this film. Matthew Lillard plays murderous characters so well and this movie really is a testament to that, I would honestly say that this movie is worth it for Matthew Lillard's performance alone.