Curse of Aurore (2020) – A Movie A Day 2021 #22
Curse of Aurore (2020) – A Movie A Day 2021 #22
I’ve been doing this A Movie A Day 2021 challenge for just over three weeks now, and you know what I haven’t watched yet? I haven’t watched any brand new horror movies. Part of the fun of this challenge is clearing out my backlog and discovering movies from the past that I’ve missed out on, but in case you didn’t know, I adore horror movies. I even have a web site about them (among other related things): The Last Theater. So yeah, I should be using part of my challenge to watch lots and lots of new scary movies so I can keep up better with modern times, and so I have something to write/talk about on my site (The Last Theater). With that in mind, I watched Curse of Aurore, a horror movie that was released on VOD on January 12, 2021. As the first horror movie released in 2021 that I’ve seen, I enjoyed it pretty well.
Curse of Aurore is a found-footage horror movie. More specifically, it’s a haunted-house-style movie framed as real footage being shown to us by a YouTuber. I’ll get back the YouTube aspect in a bit, but the main film follows three independent, no-budget filmmakers who are in rural Quebec, Canada to figure out what they want their next movie to be about. Lena, the star of their productions, is staying in a house owned by her family, and she is joined by Aaron, the director, and Kevin, the guy that does everything else. Lena has learned about a local legend that she thinks would be great for a scary movie, and she excitedly pulls Aaron and Kevin along as she tries to dig up more information from the locals.
The legend Lena is chasing is that of Aurore Gagnon, a girl who was killed by her step-mother in 1920 after years of horrible abuse. The tale of Aurore Gagnon is a real-life story (with at least two movies being made about her life), and in the world of Curse of Aurore, supernatural occurrences have been happening for years in the town where young Aurore died. Things get creepier and creepier as Lena, Aaron, and Kevin continue to investigate, and after a while it seems as if their investigations have attracted some unwanted attention.
The story is told in a way that is not unexpected for a supernatural found-footage movie. There are minor scares here and there throughout the first hour or more, and the real action kicks off in the final few minutes. It’s a structure that feels natural in a movie that is supposed to be showing us real people actually filming extraordinary things. Like I said when I wrote about The Last Exorcism, if things got crazy right away, logically the camera would turn off and everyone would just go home. But the writing in Curse of Aurore is good enough to convince me that, for the most part, these people would continue to record even when things started to go poorly for them.
In a movie like this where we’re stuck with essentially just three people for about an hour and a half, it’s important to create interesting characters and dialogue. Maybe it’s because Lena, Aaron, and Kevin are no-budget filmmakers with a passion for movies (which I can relate to), but I enjoyed getting to know these people who I was fairly certain would not be making it to the final credits. They have good banter, and I believed that they were friends even when their personalities began to clash. There’s also a scene towards the middle of the movie that I really enjoyed where Lena breaks down a bit and laments about pouring so much effort into making movies only to have no one see them. I think anyone who tries to do something creative can relate to that on some level, though I do wonder if that was somewhat of a cathartic scene for the people who were actually making Curse of Aurore. Well hey, I saw your movie, and I liked it.
It did feel like there were some red herrings and dead ends plot-wise in the first part of the movie, but in found-footage, I think a lot of that can be attributed to giving the movie a more natural feeling. People say and do things for no good reason all the time. As long as that sort of thing isn’t overdone, I think it can add to the charm of the “real life” footage. And of course, some of the stuff that was said and done was for setting a tone, and some of it made more sense later on as character building.
As for the supernatural aspects of the movie, I mostly enjoyed the way they were handled. If you’ve seen Netflix’s The Haunting of Hill House, you’ll know that it can turn into something of a game when you’re looking in the background of every scene for when you might see a ghost. Curse of Aurore has a similar approach to a lot of its earlier scares. The camera will catch things that the characters miss, and the first time I thought I saw something I went back to watch the scene again. Some of the ghostly images are pretty obvious if you’re paying attention, but some of them are very subtle and extremely quick. There’s a fair amount of replay value in Curse of Aurore just to go back and try to find more haunting images.
The ghostly things we see are used sparingly which I very much appreciate. I’m sure the budget didn’t allow for elaborate effects to be added to a bunch of scenes, and I think that works in the movie’s favor. Some of the images do feel unnatural in a computer-like way, but they’re supposed to be unnatural anyway. Well, supernatural which is pretty close to unnatural. Overall, the added images were effective more than they weren’t, and they never brought me out of the movie. I liked them, and they were done very well.
The plot did involve some amazing coincidences in order to keep things moving along, but once the movie is over, you could make an argument for the “coincidences” being orchestrated by someone or something. I can’t say anything more without major spoilers though, so I’ll leave it at that. And as for the resolution of the story, even though it wasn’t dissimilar to a number of similarly themed movies, I though it was well done. Again, there would be spoilers if I said more, so you’ll just have to watch the movie or send me a message or something if you want to know what I mean.
I’ve already said a few times now that Curse of Aurore feels like other movies of its type in many ways, but I don’t mean that as a bad thing. I’ve said it before that if a movie is well made, then it’s a good movie even if I’ve basically seen it before. I mean, genre movies are called genre movies for a reason. They follow a familiar pattern and deliver generally expected plot progressions and stories. That’s how a movie fits into a genre. I think that point is lost on like half the people that reviewed Curse of Aurore on IMDB. Anyway, I won’t get into a rant about genre or random people reviewing movies online. I’ll save that for another time. I guess my point here is, don’t believe pretty much any of the written reviews on IMDB. Just believe me. Or don’t. But I do try to be fair.
Anyway.
I enjoyed Curse of Aurore. The one thing I didn’t care for as much was the framing device they used. It’s similar to what I wrote about An American Haunting, if you’re going to frame your movie with something to the extent where the final shots of the movie aren’t going to involve any of your main characters, there needs to be a good reason for it. The framing here focuses on a YouTuber (Casey Nolan of Mind Seed TV) with a horror channel opening a blind box he bought on the dark web. He shows us some of the items in the box, and at first I thought it was kind of clever. He pulls out this red beanie with a hole in it, and when we go to the found-footage, we see one of the characters wearing the beanie in the first scene. Will we see how the beanie got a hole in it? Spoiler, we don’t. Another thing the YouTuber found in the box is a doll with a thumb drive attached to it. The footage we’re watching for the main part of the movie is supposed to be the video found on the drive.
So, I do like the idea of trying to frame the footage in a way that might explain why we are seeing what is essentially an edited down version of what was “really” filmed. Many found-footage movies leave me with the nagging question of, if this is supposed to be real, then who found all the cameras or tapes or discs or whatever, took the time to edit it, and then sent it out for the world to see? Having the YouTuber show it to us answers half of the question (he’s showing it to us), but the half of the question about who put the footage on the drive and sold it on the dark web is left unanswered. I don’t need an answer for that really (ambiguity can be good), but the way the footage ends really seems like anyone who might’ve had access to it wouldn’t want it to get out. That’s a small complaint though.
I also didn’t necessarily care for how the YouTuber reacted at the end of the movie. After watching the footage with us, he says he’s done and just walks away. That’s fine, but clearly he still did multiple takes with different camera setups, he edited the footage, and he still released “real” crimes for the world to see. It felt weird to me, and I didn’t care for that being the thing the movie left me with. I would’ve rather ended the movie with Lena, Aaron, and Kevin. But now that I think about it, if the whole YouTuber thing is supposed to be a comment on the irresponsibility of some YouTubers putting out stuff that they shouldn’t, then I take back everything I just wrote. It’s a brilliant ending (though I’d still rather be left with Lena, Aaron, and Kevin).
If you’re looking for a pretty good horror movie to start 2021 with and enjoy some supernatural found-footage, I’d recommend Curse of Aurore. It’s a fun movie with some creepy moments and satisfying finish. You can find it for rent on all sorts of streaming services including, yes, YouTube. I watched it on Amazon, but it’s cheap anywhere, so give the trailer a watch and go from there.