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Best Curse Movies

Ranked by how strongly each film carries the visual signature of curse cinema — measured across 1,662 indexed frames from 25 films, against a 408,752-frame catalogue baseline. Not by box office, and not by vote.

Curse films over-index on mist, dog and foliage — the objects that make the genre recognisable before a line is spoken.

  1. 1

    Maleficent (2014)

    Robert StrombergDP Dean SemlerIMDb 6.9TMDB 7.1See in full on FrameThrower →

    A beautiful, pure-hearted young woman, Maleficent has an idyllic life growing up in a peaceable forest kingdom, until one day when an invading army threatens the harmony of the land. Maleficent rises to be the land's fiercest protector, but she ultimately suffers a ruthless betrayal - an act that begins to turn her pure heart to stone. Bent on revenge, Maleficent faces a battle with the invading king's successor and, as a result, places a curse upon his newborn infant Aurora. As the child grows, Maleficent realizes that Aurora holds the key to peace in the kingdom - and perhaps to Maleficent's true happiness as well.

  2. 2

    The Wailing (2016)

    Na Hong-jinDP Hong Kyung-pyoIMDb 7.4TMDB 7.4See in full on FrameThrower →

    In the small village Goksung in South Korea, police officer Jong-Goo investigates bizarre murders caused by a mysterious disease. His partner relays gossip that a Japanese stranger, who lives in a secluded house in the mountains, would be an evil spirit responsible for the illness. Jong-Goo decides to visit the stranger along with his partner and a young priest who speaks Japanese. They find an altar with a goat head, pictures on the walls of the infected people that died, and an attacking guard dog that prevents their departure until the stranger arrives. Jong-Goo finds one shoe of his beloved daughter, Hyo-jin, in the house of the stranger, and soon she becomes sick. His mother-in-law summons the shaman Il-gwang to save her granddaughter while a mysterious woman tells Jong-Goo that the stranger is responsible. Who might be the demon that is bringing sickness to Goksung?

  3. 3

    Harry Potter & The Half Blood Prince (2009)

    David YatesDP Bruno DelbonnelIMDb 7.6TMDB 7.7See in full on FrameThrower →

    As Lord Voldemort tightens his grip on both the Muggle and wizarding worlds, Hogwarts is no longer a safe haven. Harry suspects perils may even lie within the castle, but Dumbledore is more intent upon preparing him for the final battle fast approaching. Together they work to find the key to unlock Voldemorts defenses and to this end, Dumbledore recruits his old friend and colleague Horace Slughorn, whom he believes holds crucial information. Even as the decisive showdown looms, romance blossoms for Harry, Ron, Hermione and their classmates. Love is in the air, but danger lies ahead and Hogwarts may never be the same again.

  4. 4

    Moana (2016)

    John Musker, Ron ClementsIMDb 7.6TMDB 7.6See in full on FrameThrower →

    Moana Waialiki is a sea voyaging enthusiast and the only daughter of a chief in a long line of navigators. When her island's fishermen can't catch any fish and the crops fail, she learns that the demigod Maui caused the blight by stealing the heart of the goddess, Te Fiti. The only way to heal the island is to persuade Maui to return Te Fiti's heart, so Moana sets off on an epic journey across the Pacific. The film is based on stories from Polynesian mythology.

  5. 5

    Inland Empire (2006)

    David LynchDP David LynchIMDb 6.8TMDB 7.0See in full on FrameThrower →

    After an uncomfortable, borderline disturbing visitation by a cryptic neighbour, the fading movie star, Nikki Grace, is thrilled to hear that she has just landed herself the female lead role in director Kingsley Stewart's sensational Southern melodrama called "On High in Blue Tomorrows". However, as she gradually disappears into her complex role, Nikki's character, Susan Blue, starts to emerge from the labyrinthine pathways of her unconscious, creeping into her delicate consciousness. More and more, as Nikki's dissociation becomes more aggressive, and her self-transcendent experience sets in motion a sometimes subtle, sometimes profound transformation, parallel worlds interweave, and a mysterious lost girl tuned into the TV sitcom, Rabbits (2002), begins to take shape. Is Stewart's ambitious project doomed to fail?

  6. 6

    Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island (1998)

    Jim StenstrumIMDb 7.8TMDB 7.7See in full on FrameThrower →

    After years of unmasking fake ghosts, the Mystery Gang have separated and acquired new careers, including Daphne being a reporter. For her birthday, Fred invites the whole gang to join their trip to Louisiana for Daphne's television show. They have many adventures but every ghost is just a villain in a costume. They soon meet Lena Dupree, who takes them to Moonscar Island in the hopes to encounter a real ghost. Things soon become creepy and the gang find themselves caught between vicious werecats and zombies lead by the ghost of Moonscar the Pirate.

  7. 7

    Lost River (2014)

    Ryan GoslingDP Benoît DebieIMDb 5.7TMDB 5.7See in full on FrameThrower →

    This movie is a dark fairy tale about love, family, and the fight for survival in the face of danger. In the virtually abandoned city of Lost River, Billy ( Christina Hendricks ), a single mother of two, is led into a macabre underworld in her quest to save her childhood home and hold her family together. Her teenage son Bones ( Iain De Caestecker ) discovers a mystery about the origins of Lost River that triggers his curiosity and sets into motion an unexpected journey that will test his limits and the limits of those he loves.

  8. 8

    Howl’s Moving Castle (2004)

    Hayao MiyazakiDP Atsushi OkuiIMDb 8.2TMDB 8.4See in full on FrameThrower →

    A love story between an 18-year-old girl named Sophie, cursed by a witch into an old woman's body, and a magician named Howl. Under the curse, Sophie sets out to seek her fortune, which takes her to Howl's strange moving castle. In the castle, Sophie meets Howl's fire demon, named Karishifâ. Seeing that she is under a curse, the demon makes a deal with Sophie--if she breaks the contract he is under with Howl, then Karushifâ will lift the curse that Sophie is under, and she will return to her 18-year-old shape.

  9. 9

    Dead Silence (2007)

    James WanDP John R. LeonettiIMDb 6.1TMDB 6.4See in full on FrameThrower →

    Every town has its own ghost story, and a local folktale around Ravens Fair is about a ventriloquist named Mary Shaw. After she went mad in the 1940s, she was accused of kidnapping a young boy who yelled out in one of her performances that she was a fraud. Because of this she was hunted down by townspeople who in the ultimate act of revenge, cut out her tongue and then killed her. They buried her along with her "children," a handmade collection of vaudeville dolls, and assumed they had silenced her forever. However, Ravens Fair has been plagued by mysterious deaths around them after Mary Shaws collection has returned from their graves and have come to seek revenge on people that killed her and their families. Far from the pall of their cursed hometown, newlyweds Jamie and Lisa Ashen thought they had established a fresh start, until Jamie's wife is grotesquely killed in their apartment. Jamie returns to Ravens Fair for the funeral, intent on unraveling the mystery of Lisa's death. Once reunited with his ill father, Edward, and his father's new young bride, Ella, Jamie must dig into the town's bloody past to find out who killed his wife and why. All the while, he is doggedly pursued by a detective who doesn't believe a word he says. As he uncovers the legend of Mary Shaw, he will unlock the story of her curse and the truth behind the threat from a rhyme in his childhood: if you see Mary Shaw and scream, she'll take your tongue. And the last thing you will hear before you die...is your own voice speaking back to you.

  10. 10

    Ringu (1998)

    Hideo NakataDP Junichiro HayashiIMDb 7.2TMDB 7.1See in full on FrameThrower →

    Reiko Asakawa is researching into a 'Cursed Video' interviewing teenagers about it. When her niece Tomoko dies of 'sudden heart failure' with an unnaturally horrified expression on her face, Reiko investigates. She finds out that some of Tomoko's friends, who had been on a holiday with Tomoko the week before, had died on exactly the same night at the exact same time in the exact same way. Reiko goes to the cabin where the teens had stayed and finds an 'unlabeled' video tape. Reiko watched the tape to discover to her horror it is in fact the 'cursed videotape'. Ex-Husband Ryuji helps Reiko solve the mystery, Reiko makes him a copy for further investigation. Things become more tense when their son Yoichi watches the tape saying Tomoko had told him to. Their discovery takes them to a volcanic island where they discover that the video has a connection to a psychic who died 30 years ago, and her child Sadako...

What curse films are made of

How much more often each element appears in a curse frame than in an average frame from the catalogue. A ratio, not a share — mist is not in most frames, it is simply far more common here than anywhere else.

  • mist4.8×
  • dog4.1×
  • foliage2.3×
  • clouds2.1×
  • trees2.0×
  • tree1.8×
  • shadow1.7×
  • eyes1.7×

How curse films are shot

Weaker signals than the objects above, and worth saying so: most dramatic genres skew dark and night-heavy, so these numbers separate curse from the catalogue far more than they separate it from its neighbours.

  • 32%dayvs 42% baseline
  • 25%widevs 20% baseline
  • 53%nightvs 43% baseline
  • 49%low keyvs 40% baseline

What breaks the pattern

The Crucible (1996) is the least typical film here — it carries the least of what the rest of this list is made of. Which is either a failure of the genre label, or the most interesting film on the page.

Method

Every frame in the FrameThrower catalogue is tagged for shot size, lighting, time of day, camera angle, colour and the objects visible in it. This page aggregates those tags across 1,662 frames from 25 films carrying the curse label, and compares each figure to the same measurement across the whole catalogue (408,752 frames). Films are ranked by how closely they match the theme’s over-indexed elements, weighted by how distinctive each element is; one film per series. Only films with at least 20 indexed frames and 500 TMDB votes are listed.

Machine-readable: /api/list/curse

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These are real movie frames, shown at reduced resolution. All rights remain with their respective owners; they appear here for study, commentary and education under fair-use principles. How these are meant to be used