Curse of the deserted Movie Review

Hi World! Today I have decided to do another review of a movie I have recently watched (regretfully). This movie is Curse of the Deserted, and as you have probably guessed from the cheesy disturbing poster, it is supposed to be a horror/thriller movie, which also makes the worse horror movie I've ever watched, or just the worse movie I've ever watched, period.

I think I should explain why I even ended up watching such a crappy movie anyway. So I was with a couple of friends celebrating a friend's birthday, and one event on the agenda was to watch a movie. Because we were at Cathay Cineplex, we had a much narrower choice of movies, and ended up buying tickets for PCK The Movie. HOWEVER, there was some miscommunication between the ppl buying the tickets and the counter staff, and we ended up with 8 tickets to Curse of the Deserted. Thinking that it was something decently scary at least, we decided to go for it anyway. BIG MISTAKE as it turned out to be.

Right, plot summary.Young writer Guo wrote about a titular curse in his book, "The Deserted Village". It began 500 years ago in the Ming Dynasty, when one of the villagers died of terminal illness. The widow Yanzi vowed to stay with her husband forever but when the man suddenly returned to life, the horrified neighbours believed that he was a monster. They burned him to death and torched his mansion. The devastated Yanzi upheld her vow and threw herself into the fire. Since then, the village was cursed and the mansion subsequent inhabitant dies mysteriously. Some say only couples who share true love can survive in that village. Those who are unfaithful will come to their demise. To the world, the book was pure fiction. Only Guo and his ex-girlfriend Zhi had lived through the horror to know its existence. When four college students decided to explore the village themselves, the trip led them to an ancient well in Yanzi's mansion, where the curse was unleashed once again.

The summary is a heck a lot more exciting than the actual movie. To me, the movie was just about the 4 college students going to the village, and slowly dying one by one, with romance and some witty dialogue randomly inserted in between.

I don't even know how to begin assessing this movie. Maybe the reasons why I don't think it is good would be good. Right, so for me ,movies should stick strictly to their genres. Meaning, if the movie is a horror movie, no matter how crappy the plot is or how crappy the acting is, as long as its scary enough, its a good movie. I personally felt this movie was way too adventurous, trying to dabble into too many areas at the same time. The movie attempted to blend romance with horror, which left the movie hanging in limbo, fitting neither requirements for both genres, leading to well, a crappy movie.

The movie wasn't particularly scary, and the visual effects were completely sloppy. There were only brief moments where the director used suspense music to compensate for the atmosphere. Romance was also not particularly evident, only in the random flashbacks that constantly appeared near the end of the movie. Speaking of the ending, ARGH, the ending was really the thing that completely killed the movie. In the end, the entire episode just turned out to be a plot of a book the main character, and that in real life her boyfriend had been involved in a car accident, which inspired her to write. What the heck, that really destroyed any scrape of liking I had had to the movie until that point.

In conclusion, Curse of the Deserted is really a substandard movie which I don't recommend, but if you've been watching too many good movies like Inception and Avatar lately, then maybe you can watch it to be reminded how sucky a movie can get, and maybe get a good laugh out of it.

Rating : 1.5/5 stars - at least there was a decent amount of blood. Watch it if you're seriously bored.

~Kevan