Movie Review: Curve (2015)

The movie stars Julianne Hough, Teddy Sears, Penelope Mitchell, Drew Rausch and Madalyn Horcher.

My wife had a company party last night but, even after getting the kids from my parents' house afterwards, we found we still had time for a short movie. Since this film sounded somewhat unique, I decided to give it a try and it turned out to be pretty good.

At first, I wasn't really sure what this movie would be about. From the description on Netflix, I figured she would drive the truck off the road and the rest of the film would be her trying to escape on foot. That, however, wasn't the case. Instead, the movie was about her trying to survive inside the wrecked truck with a trapped leg and her psychopath passenger returning every so often to torment her.

One thing I liked about this film was the fact they made Mallory (Hough) tougher than I was expecting her to be. A lot of times, these films will make the female characters a little too weak. Mallory, however, seemed to be willing to take the necessary steps to survive. This started out with her trying to cooperate with her tormentor, Christian (Sears). When that didn't work, she started fighting back whenever he showed up. The latter was the most entertaining because I wasn't sure how he was going to react to it.

In addition to dealing with him, she ended up taking some steps I wasn't really expecting, such as killing, cooking and eating a rat and even resorting to drinking her own urine. Again, it's not something you normally see characters (especially female characters) do in films like this and I quickly gained respect for her.

The fact her leg was pinned inside the truck also kept things interesting because it was unclear how she was going to be able to escape. The most obvious way (as Christian points out to her) is to cut off her leg. But, I wasn't sure if she would actually do that or if she would find some other way of freeing it. This especially became an issue when it starts to rain/flood.

I was a little concerned the ending of the movie would be dragged out a bit too much. But, as it turns out, that actually was pretty entertaining as well, especially when she ends up facing Christian. I was glad about this because it was nice seeing such a good movie have a strong finish.

This is a very good psychological thriller that has some bad language (I wouldn't recommend watching this with the kids) but not a lot of excessive blood and gore. I do recommend taking the time to watch it if you get a chance to do so.

My Grade: A