On the one hand, there’s the emotional power of hearing Gary Sherman discuss Heather O’Rourke and how her illness affected the production. It also has professors of religion interviewed and practicing occultists. Not only does this involve discussing how two different planes carrying people associated with the films were struck by lightning, as well as a plane crash, car accident, and IRA bombing happening near production. It centers on the power of films based on religion and Satanism to invite dark entities. Not only does it interview director Richard Donner at length there’s a taste more direction in what the episode wants to focus on.
The second episode, about 1976’s “The Omen,” holds a little more meat on the bone. These items have little to do with the curse but are meant to create a central thesis to the episode. One of these videos actually includes an interview with the next-door neighbor. There’s also an extended sequence of people finding the real house used in “Poltergeist” and taking pictures or videos in front of it.
This interplay between the history of filmmaking, horror tropes, and internet culture could be interesting, but the episode diverges into looking at the presumed power of specific objects, visiting a horror collector’s home and the bizarre movie monster masks he holds. Even a brief interview with the man who designed the first film’s skeletons, which many assumed were real and thus responsible for the curse, lifts the veil on moviemaking to showcase how curses are more the result of folklore than truth. Sherman’s honest and heartbreaking discussion of O’Rourke’s death and his desire to shelve the film, which was subsequently overruled by MGM, gets at the heart of showing how real people were affected. You’d assume all three of those elements are touched upon, but in ways that just feel wafer-thin.
The series appears confused about what it wants to do, whether that’s to explore the production of these movies, discuss why curses in horror films are so popular, or what these curses say about us. Where the curses associated with these movies feel so strong, “Cursed Films” only has the thinnest of threads to properly explore them. 'Yellowstone' Season 4 Paints a Heroic Portrait of Doomed Men, Reason Be DamnedĮmmy Predictions: Best Actor in a Drama Series - One More for Porter, or a First for O'Connor? 'Saturday Night Live' Review: The Best and Worst of Billie Eilish's Hosting Debut With none of the living cast interviewed nor any of the significant production people, aside from “Poltergeist III” director Gary Sherman, it’s easy to question whether the episode fills a 27-minute runtime. However, this unanswerable question never seems to get properly analyzed. Actors Will Sampson and Julian Beck would pass after the film’s sequel came out, while leading child star Heather O’Rourke passed at just 11-years-old while working on “Poltergeist III.” It’s easy to see where audiences would start to wonder if there was more than coincidence at play. When the 1982 feature “Poltergeist” debuted it was quickly tempered by the murder of actress Dominique Dunne.
The material is interesting, especially in conjunction with the features the five-part documentary series covers, but director Jay Cheel takes too many tangential digressions to keep things from feeling tiring.
That feature’s success sparked a desire for the service to cater to more niche facets of film history, and their next foray into that arena is “ Cursed Films,” which looks to examine films that have long histories of being cursed. Last year, AMC’s horror-centric streaming service Shudder unveiled the compelling documentary “Horror Noire,” examining the role African-Americans played throughout film history.