“The Curse” review: Emma Stone and Nathan Fielder star in the weirdest, most unforgettable show of 2023

Stone and Fielder star as married HGTV hosts in Showtime's unrelentingly odd dramedy "The Curse."

Nathan Fielder fans know he is not interested in giving the audience a comfortable viewing experience. The comedian and writer established himself as an auteur of verité humiliation with Comedy Central's Nathan for You and more recently, HBO's The Rehearsal, both of which showcase Fielder's ability to push socially awkward situations to their most revealing extreme.

His latest endeavor for Showtime — The Curse, co-created by Benny Safdie (Uncut Gems) — is scripted, but it lives in the same triangle of humor, disquiet, and truth. Fielder stars with Emma Stone as Asher and Whitney Siegel, fledgling HGTV hosts determined to gentrify a New Mexico town that doesn't want them, even as their own marriage falls into disrepair. Blending cringe comedy with contemplative character study and undertones of horror, The Curse is unrelentingly odd and tough to forget.

Married one year, Asher and Whitney live in Española, a diverse, working-class city in northern New Mexico. That's where they hope to launch an eco-friendly, passive house "revolution" with their HGTV pilot Flipanthropy, which centers on the duo's efforts to build and sell chic and sustainable homes designed by Whitney. As the show's (terrible) title suggests, Whitney and Asher are convinced that luring out-of-town buyers and high-end businesses to Española will ultimately help the community — even though most current residents struggle to make ends meet. As Asher explains to local TV reporter Monica Perez (Tessa Mentus), "We really believe that gentrification doesn't have to be a game of winners and losers."

But what the couple stubbornly refuses to acknowledge is that believing something doesn't make it fact. Whitney, for one, chooses to believe that people won't draw connections between her Española real estate endeavors and those of her parents, Paul (Corbin Bernsen) and Elizabeth (Constance Shulman), who were dubbed "slumlords" by the Santa Fe Reporter in 2020. But connect they do. That same TV interview turns tightrope tense when Monica presses Whitney about her parents' "ruthless approach to evictions," and Asher snaps — an outburst that causes lingering problems for the couple.

Meanwhile, Flipanthropy's producer Dougie (Safdie), a sketchy reality TV veteran, keeps pushing for more conflict from his stars, separately wheedling Asher and Whitney to grouse about each other on camera. Dougie regularly tries to stage moments for the show, and in the premiere he convinces Asher to give money to Nala (Hikmah Warsame), a little Somali girl selling sodas in a plaza parking lot. Once the cameras stop rolling, Asher takes back the cash — a $100 bill — and promises to return with 20 bucks, but Nala isn't having it. Angry at Asher's deception, she glares at him with the ferocity only children can muster and declares, "I curse you." He tries to brush it off, but as production continues and many of his and Whitney's self-serving philanthropic acts backfire, Asher starts to fear that Nala's hex is having real consequences.

Fielder, who directs 7 of the 10 episodes, regularly shoots Asher and Whitney from a distance, often through a doorway or from behind a window, as though the camera is eavesdropping on their conversation. It's a conceit that serves to emphasize the contrast between the image his protagonists' present to Flipanthropy's cameras — bright and earnest, playful and loving — and who they are in those fretful, surreptitious moments when they think no one is looking.

Whitney and Asher are surrounded by people who quietly despise them but feign tolerance because it serves their needs. Local Native artist Cara (Nizhonniya Luxi Austin) is almost matter of fact in her acceptance of the Siegels' white-guilt largesse, and Austin brings an understated force to her character's more pointed interactions with Whitney. Explaining the meaning of her recent performance-art installment — one that involves a teepee and a deli meat slicer — Cara schools Whitney with condescension disguised as polite composure. The piece represents "me giving pieces of myself to people, whether I want to or not," says Cara. "And as a Native person, that's basically what you're doing every day." The camera, lurking over Cara's right shoulder, pulls in on Whitney's face, frozen in a strained smile as she simultaneously accepts and rejects that hard truth.

And after the incident with Nala in the parking lot, the girl's father, Abshir (Captain Phillips' Barkhad Abdi), becomes the target of Asher and Whitney's performative generosity, which he receives with impassive detachment. Abdi brings a touching wariness to Abshir, who endures the Seigels' intrusion into his family's lives but refuses to give them the abject gratitude they so clearly desire. It's only when Asher continues to prod Nala for information about her "curse" that Abshir finally scolds his unwanted benefactor. "If you put an idea in your head," he warns Asher, "it can become very real." It's a lesson that comes too late for the Siegels — and The Curse explores how the convictions we cling to about ourselves, good and bad, can be equally destructive.

Stone is mesmerizing as Whitney, a character so selfish and yet desperate for approval she is almost completely insufferable. Fielder and Safdie, who co-wrote every episode, weave fraught pauses into most scenes, and Stone conveys an avalanche of emotion and mental machinations in each of Whitney's silences. Subverting her trademark doe-eyed sweetness, the actress makes Whitney both pathetic and unflinchingly unlikable, a woman who insists on turning every spark of human connection into another moment of public image curation.

Dougie — whose incredibly tasteless dating show pilot provides one of the biggest laughs of the series — is truly The Curse's most honest character, in that he's openly awful. But Safdie eschews the sleazy reality TV producer stereotype, creating a man who is both pitiful and venal. Decimated by his wife's accidental death, Dougie alternates between sublimating and wallowing in his gnawing, all-consuming guilt. Though Fielder sometimes struggles to match his co-stars during the characters' more intense and emotional confrontations, he's particularly good at channeling the icy cruelty and brazen superiority Asher unleashes in his moments of rage.

The Curse is cursed with unnecessarily long episode runtimes, as so many premium series are. Part of the bloat stems from Fielder's penchant for luxuriating in moments of awkwardness, steeping the viewer in their own discomfort long after most shows — even most cringe comedies — would have mercifully cut away. Other scenes just drift along to nowhere, and there's a sense that Fielder and Safdie had so much admiration for their eclectic ensemble, it was hard for them to kill their proverbial darlings. Asher's late-season epiphany about the curse is undermined, perhaps intentionally, by the truly bizarre finale, about which Showtime has asked critics to keep completely mum.

That's fine, because I think the only thing I have to say about the finale at this moment is, "Um… what?" It's certainly not something we've seen before, nor am I convinced that it makes any kind of sense within the story itself. That said, I haven't been able to stop myself from noodling over theories, which are almost certainly wrong. Expect plenty of "The Curse ending explained!" posts to flood your feeds come January 12 once the finale airs — but I'll probably just sit with the mystery. As The Curse's cheerless couple discovers, the truth is often more trouble than it's worth. Grade: B+

The Curse premieres Nov. 10 on Paramount + with Showtime, and then on linear TV Nov. 12 at 10 p.m. on Showtime.

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