General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

Cursed Films

Cursed Films is a documentary series produced for the horror streaming service Shudder that examines the myths and legends surrounding Hollywood film productions widely believed to be cursed. Directed and written by Jay Cheel, a Canadian documentary filmmaker whose earlier work includes Beauty Day and How to Build a Time Machine, the series ran for two seasons from 2020 to 2022 and pairs each episode's supernatural lore with skeptical, fact-based investigation of what actually happened on set.¹^•²

Key fact	Detail
Format	Documentary series, roughly 30 minutes per episode, one film per episode; two seasons of five episodes each¹^•³
Creator	Jay Cheel, director, writer, and showrunner; executive producers include Cheel, Brian Robertson, Andrew Nicholas McCann Smith, and Laura Perlmutter²^•⁴
Season 1 premiere	April 2, 2020 on Shudder, with episodes staggered over the first three Thursdays of April⁴^•²
Season 1 subjects	The Exorcist, Poltergeist, The Omen, The Crow, and Twilight Zone: The Movie⁴
Season 2 subjects	The Wizard of Oz, Rosemary's Baby, Stalker, The Serpent and the Rainbow, and Cannibal Holocaust⁵
Reception	Season 1 holds 91% on the Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer from 23 critics and 73% from audiences⁴
Status	Ended; the final episode, on Cannibal Holocaust, aired May 5, 2022⁵

Spoilers

Season 1 (2020)

Shudder conceived the series and approached Cheel to pitch his version; his stated aim was to examine why audiences find these legends fascinating and to let interview subjects speak honestly, since coverage of cursed productions usually leans toward the supernatural.⁸ The series was selected for the 2020 SXSW Film Festival, but the COVID-19 pandemic prevented its festival premiere.⁹

The five episodes cover:

The Exorcist (aired April 2, 2020): reports of fainting theatergoers and on-set accidents surrounding the film's release.⁴
Poltergeist (April 9, 2020): a series of untimely deaths connected to the Poltergeist films, with suspicions stoked by rumors that real human skeletons were used during production.⁴
The Omen (April 9, 2020): misfortunes plaguing the cast and crew, which the episode treats playfully at points, at one stage advancing the idea that the film was "anti-cursed," with Satan working to ensure it was made.⁴^•³
The Crow (April 16, 2020): the on-set death of Brandon Lee, son of Bruce Lee, whose own mysterious death had been attributed to a "Lee family curse."⁴
Twilight Zone: The Movie (April 16, 2020): the helicopter accident during John Landis's segment that killed actor Vic Morrow and child actors Myca Dinh Le, aged 7, and Renee Shin-Yi Chen, aged 6, both of whom were being employed illegally; the episode includes footage of the accident.⁴^•³

The tone shifts across the season, from puckishly skeptical in the early episodes to genuinely tragic by the end, and the Twilight Zone episode was shaped by the firsthand account of production designer Richard Sawyer.²^•⁸ Cheel acknowledges throughout that belief in a curse has more to do with the human need to find reasons for random tragedies, a point the Omen episode spends several minutes on.²

Season 2 (2022)

The second season, promoted as Cursed Films II, broadened beyond horror to films with difficult or controversial productions. It opened with The Wizard of Oz, whose dark legends include Buddy Ebsen's health problems on set and a long-circulating story about munchkin actors, and closed with Cannibal Holocaust, described in the episode listing as arguably the most controversial film ever produced.¹⁰^•⁵ The intervening episodes covered Roman Polanski's Rosemary's Baby, Andrei Tarkovsky's Stalker (with its damaged film stock, earthquakes, and later illnesses among cast and crew), and Wes Craven's The Serpent and the Rainbow, filmed largely in Haiti and the Dominican Republic.⁵^•¹¹ Cheel has said the show itself claims nothing is or is not cursed; it examines what movies people think are cursed and gives each perspective a counter-perspective, with each episode's tone dictated by its subjects.¹⁰

The "cursed film" idea

In horror fandom, a cursed film is a movie whose troubled production history, on-set accidents, or deaths among its cast and crew are attributed to an unseen malevolent or spiritual force, sometimes framed as a power trying to prevent the film's "evil" energy from being released.⁶ The most cited example is William Friedkin's 1973 supernatural horror The Exorcist, which ran far past its planned schedule and budget because of on-set accidents and injuries, and around which several people connected to the production died; Friedkin himself fueled speculation by suggesting in magazine interviews that the film's subject, demonic possession, might explain the incidents.⁶

The label overlaps with, but is distinct from, the French critical term film maudit, literally a "cursed film," which refers to a movie panned by mainstream critics yet defended by a devoted minority.⁷ A film maudit incorporates its curse aesthetically rather than suffering one during production.⁷

Reception and availability

Critics responded favorably to the first season. Rotten Tomatoes records a 91% Tomatometer score from 23 reviews and a critics' consensus praising the series' open-minded approach.⁴ The Daily Beast's review noted that each episode balances lurid detail with appropriate gravity for real-world tragedy while casting a skeptical eye on the magical thinking that turns coincidence into a curse.¹² IndieWire was less positive, giving a C+ and finding the presentation thinner than the material.⁴

The series is a Shudder original; it streams on Shudder and AMC+ and can be purchased through Fandango.⁴^•¹³ Rotten Tomatoes lists the first season's rating as TV-14, while AMC+ lists the series as TV-MA.⁴^•¹⁴

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Series and fictional screen worlds › Unscripted, reality, and web-native series › Documentary, docudrama, and lifestyle series › Factual entertainment and specialist-interest formats › Premiered 2020 to 2026

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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