Just days before its release, Emma Stone's new TV series The Curse has been met with divisive critic reviews online and on Rotten Tomatoes despite its current 83% score.
The genre-bending show, from minds such as Uncut Gems’ Benny Safdie, follows Stone and comedian Nathan Fielder as a newly married couple as they try to conceive a child while co-starring in their new home-improvement show. But whilst on the job, the pair encounter an alleged curse. The project, co-written and co-directed by Fielder himself, acts as a parody of popular American home remodeling shows on HGTV.
While Stone has found major success this year with her movie Poor Things, which scored 100% on RT, her new role in this off-the-beat creepy comedy, seems to be drawing more mixed reviews.
Judy Berman from Time Magazine commends the show, saying “Once again, it’s Fielder, a man whose face seems frozen in a flinch at the constant awareness of his own existence in this humiliating world, who makes the experience so transcendently uncomfortable.”
Similarly, Kristen Baldwin from Entertainment Weekly states that the show's “Blending cringe comedy with contemplative character study and undertones of horror” makes The Curse truly hard to forget.
However, not everybody is a fan. “In the end, the mix of tones and genres is more confounding than exciting,” says Alan Sepinwall from Rolling Stone, “as if Fielder and Safdie weren’t sure what they ultimately wanted to accomplish beyond hours of oppressive claustrophobia in desperate search of release.”
Kathryn VanArendonk from Vulture echos this, saying the show leaves a lot of its ideas undeveloped, “especially from its central themes about race and constructions of the self.”
These contrasting comments suggest that The Curse is truly not for everyone, but if you have the humor of Fielder and are a fan of mad parodies, then you may enjoy the show. Then again, maybe you won't.
The Curse will be available to stream on Paramount Plus from November 10. For more of what's hot on Rotten Tomatoes, check out our list of the highly ranked top 10 shows you can stream this month.
