Benny Safdie confirms The Curse’s ending was “always the ending”
"From the beginning, this was the ending," Safdie said of his and Nathan Fielder's head-scratcher of a finale
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There has been and will be a lot to say about the ending of The Curse. Benny Safdie and Nathan Fielder’s 10-episode horror-comedy about the intersection of gentrification and reality TV seemingly tells you everything you need to know. Asher was cursed and, therefore, must be ejected from Earth. In a twist worthy of Shyamalan, his passive house sensed a new occupant (his baby) and did what it does best: Reduce unnecessary energy, e.g. Asher. It makes sense. Still, many remain flummoxed by the sudden and horrific burst of magical realism. “They just didn’t know how to end this thing,” says the strawman naysayer. Well, according to the show’s co-creator, co-writer, and co-star Benny Safdie, they started with the ending and worked backward.
“From the beginning, this was always the ending,” Safdie told the audience at last week’s screening of episode 10, rejecting any Monday morning show running that they didn’t know how to end this thing. When Film at Lincoln Center Assistant Programmer Maddie Whittle asked how he “reverse engineered” the show from that scene, Safdie, who spent much of the talk avoiding any specific readings of the episode, said, “Well, originally, he floats away but very slowly and then, practically speaking, we’re like ‘Oh, wouldn’t it be more exciting if it was reverse gravity and so then it was literally like falling off a cliff upwards.”
Safdie said that image is what they were chasing. However, it doesn’t exactly answer the question of why. Safdie, taking a page out of David Lynch’s playbook, decides to avoid spoiling the mystery and describe his intended effect of the happening.
I know there are a lot of questions about why it happened, and I imagine, why him? We have reasons, but it is very early in the gestation of all this, so the way I’d like to leave it is like, if you have a drawer, for example, and there was no handle on the drawer, how would you open it? Would you tip it forward, so that the drawer falls out? Would you use a knife to get into the crack and open it? Maybe you’ll take some tape and stick it to the front and pull it out that way. You’d come up with a lot of different ways to open that drawer, and what you’d find is the same information, but the way you got the information was your own. If you put a handle on the drawer, you just open it right up and find your information, so you lose a little bit of that process and that kind of searching, which I think is important for this.
I do think there is something strange in that. You will be watching something and asking, why did this happen? Why did this thing, which is clearly supernatural—why did this happen? How could it happen? It had to have been this, it had to have been that. You’re trying to find reasons for it, so it’s not too dissimilar to what it would be like if you were actually there. That was something that was important to us, which is when you’re faced with something like that, how would you respond?
[…]
I think in the process of trying to understand it, you understand more.
Safdie then proceeded to poll the audience on who believes in the supernatural, determined only five people did and then talked about how they pulled the episode off practically. He is right, though. Having an answer would certainly absolve us of Asher’s terror and diminish the show.
The whole talk is worth watching for fans of the show, its ending, and seeing Nathan Fielder on FaceTime. However, it seemed like less fun for Safdie, who described the Q&A as “like walking on landmines.”
Season one of The Curse is available to stream now on Paramount+.
22 Comments
I took the ending as implying the universe determined Asher was the curse on Whitney’s (and his baby’s life). And when they attempted to lift the curse, it succeeded. But the effect was to literally lift Asher off the planet.
I saw it as Dougie’s curse from the boy’s night out episode. Dougie bullies Asher all night until he says something incredibly mean about Dougie’s dead wife. So he curses Asher.
yeah i mean the show is called the curse i just assumed it was the curse. what more could you need?
I took the ending as implying the universe determined Asher was the curse on Whitney’s (and his baby’s life). And when they attempted to lift the curse, it succeeded. But the effect was to literally lift Asher off the planet.
It’s kinda funny how different this is from shows like the Walking Dead franchise where they show almost as much, if not more, behind the scenes content with the writers explaining every detail and everyone’s motivation as they do of actual show content.I was surprised when I was watching the last episode of Walking Dead NYC (or whatever it was), and halfway through they started showing cast interviews. I kept watching for awhile, thinking there must more show, but I finally gave up.
I probably would’ve liked the ending more if there was a bit more weirdness in the rest of the series. The weirder moments there before (i.e., the chicken curse, Asher’s, uh, issue, etc.) all felt grounded and the ending took a big swing into magic realism that just wasn’t really there before. I enjoyed the series, and there was probably not going to be a way to wrap things up neatly, but this it didn’t feel like it was setup well. Comparisons to Lynch are being made, but Lynch’s weirdness is much more consistent, yet still manages to surprise.
I get what you’re coming from, but it worked for me because the reverse gravity thing at the end felt real. Everyone reacted to it appropriately, people who walked in to the situation were skeptical, most people’s minds didn’t leap to the supernatural, etc. There was even a moment where I was actually convinced the air pressure thingy was the culprit because of how grounded the entire sequence felt.The other reason it worked for me is that the whole fucking show was weird. The music, the cinematography, the characters. There is a very palpable sense of “what the fuck is going on here” from episode 1 that was constantly at odds with the grounded, sometimes even mundane events that were happening on the screen.I get why the ending won’t work for everyone, but if there was ever a show that conveyed so much more through visuals and audio than the script alone, I’d argue that it was this one.
There is a very palpable sense of “what the fuck is going on here” from episode 1 that was constantly at odds with the grounded, sometimes even mundane events that were happening on the screen
I guess my outlook is that all the mundane things were just that, mundane. They were presented as quirks, but ultimately explainable for the most part or indicative of other themes (i.e., the idea of Asher buying into the curse as an extension of his own insecurities and how the mere thought of something he can’t control him will undermine him). Even the other people acting rationally to the final scene underlined the weirdness at the end wasn’t really in line with what came before.I thought the soundtrack did a good job creating unease, which was already in place in the script, but not necessarily in a way that denoted something stranger was afoot.
It makes sense.It did not.
It’s OK for people to say they just don’t like the ending. You’re not obligated to like every part of something. Maybe they could have foreshadowed it a little better, but then someone is just as likely to say they hammered the audience over the head with said foreshadowing.
Everyone’s an expert when they’re looking at the work of someone else.
Yes, this. The vast majority of comments I read on any piece of culture are no different from amateur sports punditry.
I accept that they planned it this way, I just maintain it was a bad plan. 9 episodes ratcheting up excrutiating tension through more-or-less believable human behaviour, and then jettisoning all that for the finale? It was a missed opportunity. I, for one, would have loved to see Green Queen renewed and Whitney/Asher forced to maintain a sham marriage in order to keep the ratings up.
Wow, really? You wanted a second season? I loved the show but the only thing that kept me watching to the end was the knowledge that some huge calamity would finally break the tension and bring it all to and end. It was excruciating.
Oh no, I wanted the series finale to show the horribly twisted doom that Whitney/Asher are locked into once the show becomes a success, and they have to maintain a sham marriage. I would hate a second season!
I’ve told my family and friends not to bother with the series because of the finale. Horrible deus ex machina and i don’t believe they had that bs ending and came up with the series to support that shit.