Listening
to Roxette is simply bad karma. Mallory Rutledge claims it is just a mix tape her
sister made, but she keeps playing it. Nevertheless, she certainly does not deserve
what happens when she picks up a psychotic hitchhiker in Iain Softley’s Curve (trailer here), a Blumhouse
production, which releases today on DVD.
Rutledge
is clearly less than psyched about her imminent wedding, yet she agreed to
drive her workaholic fiancé’s blazer from San Francisco to the ceremony in
Denver. She is taking the scenic route, which we know will be her downfall.
When the old school SUV breaks down in a cellular dead zone, Christian Laughton
comes along just at the wrong moment. He actually gets her up and rolling again—and
even seems willing to let Rutledge go her own way. Unfortunately, when she
offers him a ride out of guilt, it gives the phony moralizer license to unleash
his inner Max Cady.
Things
quickly go from bad to worse when the alarmed Rutledge runs off the road. Laughton
is thrown free, but she is pinned inside the car, well beyond the sightline
from the highway. At first, Laughton is somewhat confused by this turn of
events, but he subsequently returns to torment her at regular intervals. Of
course, there is also a torrential storm on the horizon to further raise the
stakes.
Softley
seemed to have a promising career ahead of him when Backbeat, the fifth Beatle movie, came out in 1994, but his subsequent
films have only been consistent in their inconsistency. Curve is ever more so. On paper, it looks like a fusion of The Hitcher and 127 Hours, but the finished product is a ho-hum affair that
frequently relies on stupidity to drive the action (hidden cell phones ringing
at inopportune times, cops thinking they hear Rutledge’s desperate cries for
help but then deciding it was nothing after all, etc., etc.).
The
blond surfer-looking Teddy Sears actually has a somewhat credible Ted Bundy
thing going on and Julianne Hough does serviceable work as the reasonably
proactive Rutledge. However, his attempts to goad her into some sort of
self-assertive survival mindset jut ring false.
