[Movie Review] CURSED FRIENDS - Nightmarish Conjurings

Boo, bitches! Halloween has come and gone, and that means it’s time to reflect on the conclusion of what is the best time of the year for spooky themes. I don’t know about you but while I love a movie that will keep me from sleeping for a night (or two), I am a sucker for a good horror comedy. Unfortunately, good horror comedies are hard to come by. More often than not, it’s schlocky or slapstick and relies too much on fart jokes. Luckily for us, there is Comedy Central and their movie, CURSED FRIENDS.

Hey millennials, do you remember the game MASH? I do and I am still waiting for Nick Carter to knock on my door and ask for my hand in marriage. That’s beside the point. What if the results of those games actually dictated your life? CURSED FRIENDS follows the Core Three: Erica (Jessica Lowe), Mikayla (Nicole Byer), and Andy (Harvey Guillen) along with Erica’s brother Josh (Andrew Lewis Caldwell). One Halloween in the early 2000s, the kids were trick-or-treating when they came across the house of one creepy lady (Kathy Griffin). In lieu of candy, she gives them an activity book to play MASH. They play a bit but then move on with their Halloween.

Years later, Erica has moved away from California but finds herself moving back for a job opportunity. Mikayla is a single mom working a job she hates and Andy pretends to be Gen Z for his job as a yoga instructor to influencers. After partying a bit too hard upon her return, the trio finds the old activity book and reminisces about their given “futures.” Unfortunately, they read a poem on the inside of the book and suddenly the futures begin to change in hilarious ways. Unfortunately, some of their futures are better than others and they must work together to find out how to break the curse and get back to their normal lives.

While the premise of CURSED FRIENDS is silly, the movie itself is so well done. The chemistry between the friends feels real. Each and every one of them brings their own brand of comedy to the table. While they are all funny in their own right, Guillen knocks them all out of the water. He leans HARD into that character and he had me rolling the entire movie. His interactions with his old geometry teacher (Rob Riggle) were so damn funny that I won’t be able to see anything else while I watch him in What We Do in the Shadows.

There is so much early 2000s nostalgia in CURSED FRIENDS that anyone who lived their adolescence through low-rise jeans, NSYNC vs Backstreet Boys, scarves as belts, among many other atrocities we had to face (ties with t-shirts, anyone?), will feel like a kid again.

This movie is a full-on blast and I can see myself putting CURSED FRIENDS on my roster of must-watch Halloween (or anything during the year, really) movies every year to come. What does your future hold?