Dead Man's Curve
Tags: plot twist, comedy, murder

Plot synopsis:
Mallory (Julianne Hough) is a young bride-to-be on her way to Denver for her wedding rehearsal. She video chats with her sister, Ella (Penelope Mitchell), on her way there. Ella tells her that she hasn't bought her plane tickets yet because she wants to make sure Mallory is actually in love and happy with her decisions. Mallory responds by telling her she's happy in a fake voice. She hangs up with her sister and continues driving. A few minutes later, her car breaks down unexpectedly. She tries calling AAA, but she has no service. She also tries doing some tricks under the hood of the car, but to no avail.
While Mallory tries changing her clothes near the back of the car, she spots a man, Christian (Teddy Sears). She quickly puts on a tank top and tells him her situation. He eventually gets her car started for her. She then says she would offer him a ride, but was in a rush. She starts to drive away but, out of guilt, stops and offers him a ride.
Along the way, he starts acting odd. He talks about how fate brought them together and how it was supposed to happen like this. He then tells her how she couldn't "deepthroat his huge cock". She then stops and tells him to get out. He pulls out a knife and tells her to drive.
She notices his seat belt is off and tries to kill him by speeding towards a guardrail near a curve. They crash violently. Mallory wakes up to find the car upside down. She unhooks her seat belt, but she can't get out. She notices her leg is caught and pinned between the seat, all bloody. She tries pushing out, but fails. Christian slowly wakes up and tells her she needs to get herself out of this one and leaves her. She tries honking her horn and screaming for help but no one can hear her.
Mallory slips on a hoodie and drinks the last bit of her water bottle. The following morning Christian comes back and eats and drinks in front of her. He tells her how this was supposed to happen and how fate is a funny thing. That night a bunch of rats come in and slather around her. She kills one of them and eats a strip of its meat and drinks her own urine. Christian comes back and tells her how he's holding a family hostage and pretending to be a police officer. He then gives her a saw. At first Mallory thinks he gave it to her to cut through the seat, but he tells her he doesn't expect it to and how if she doesn't cut off her leg she's going to die.
That night a huge rainstorm hits and Christian comes to say his goodbyes but she attacks him and throws his car keys outside to where he can't find them. A police car pulls up from the curve, he runs and tells the officer his car won't start. The officer tells him he'll give him a ride but hears Mallory's scream. The officer thinks he's imagining things and drives away with Christian.
The car starts to flood and she starts trying to cut her leg off, but barely makes a few superficial cuts before her leg comes free out of the seat due to the assistance of the flood. She makes it out and goes to the cabin where Christian says he was at. She discovers he killed the police officer and the parents and he's keeping the daughter Katie hostage. She aims a gun she found and tells him if he moves, she shoots. He attacks Mallory as Katie runs out the front door. Mallory twists his nose and elbows his stomach before running. She hides under a table, he finds her and she gets up and runs. He smashes her into a mirror but she manages to keep him down on the ground long enough for her to run upstairs. Christian looks for her upstairs, but Mallory sneaks from behind a dresser, creeps behind him and pushes him off of a second-story balcony and he falls and crushes his leg into a bear trap. She limps downstairs and gives him his knife and tells him how fate really brought this together and she's going to give him the same chance that he gave her. Christian soon succumbs to his wound and dies. The final scene shows Mallory limping down the road with Katie as the front door of the house slams shut.

Review: It doesn't matter how bad the film is, you can always count on Matthew Lillard.
He plays disturbed killer Tim who, with the help of his room mate Chris(michael vartan), plots to kill other room mate Rand(randall bakinkoff).
The movie contains enough plot turns to make your head spin at times, but the acting is solid and the storyline was more than enough to keep me captivated throughout.
The performances (especially Matthew Lillard) were great and I just dig it when a bad guy thrives as much as Lillard did in this movie.
In the end Dead Man's Curve just becomes one of those thrillers that wants to be too smart and too original / surprising, resulting in a very annoying and unbelievable ending.
Another black comedy but - this one is actually worth watching.For those who enjoyed Scream - Part 1 and Wild Things - The Curve is a must see.
The acting is mainly just passable apart from the always excellent Matthew Lillard who always plays the slightly maniacal jerk role so brilliantly and and there is an early appearance for the gorgeous Keri Russell.
There is a great twist ending which along with Lillard's performance elevates this film above average for it's genre.
This is not a great film by any means but it is very entertaining and well worth watching if you're at a loose end..
After seeing Matthew Lillard in Scream I instantly became a fan of his, so when I was looking for other movies that he'd done, I went down to my video shop and found a movie called "Dead mans curve".
I loved this movie especially Lillards trademark facial expressions, watch out Jim Carrey.
With Lillard due to appear in the new Scooby Doo movie, Lillards career looks rosey, as for Dead Mans Curve, that now has its rightful place in my Video cabinet.
it twists so many times you completely get lost, and by the end of the movie, you have no idea what just happened!
What follows is a great movie in where the viewer is switched from one situation to an other (who is who, who is dead...) and they're all lead by the pervert performance from Matthew Lilard (Thirteen ghosts, Scream) who plays the role of his life.
Dead Man's Curve revolves around an urban legend that if your college roommate commits suicide, you get pass grades for the term to help ease your pain.
Enter Chris {Michael Vartan} and Tim {Matthew Lillard} who decide to test this theory by offing their buddy Rand {Randall Batinkoff}.
It's a deliciously evil premise that thankfully, in spite of the film's low reputation, makes for an enjoyable genre spliced viewing.Directed and written by Dan Rosen, Dead Man's Curve has a clever plot at its core, our pair of rotters, tho Chris is a sheepish accomplice to the dominant Tim, set it up nicely by way of chatty concerns with the school psychologist and the shifty purchase of depressing music.
And that's in a good way as well.The young cast, handsome and ebullient, do fine work here, particularly Lillard, who expands on his loony turn in Scream from two years earlier with much maniacal relish.
Having found out that if a roommate at collage commits suicide you get an automatic 4.0 average both Tim, Matthew Lillard, and Chris, Michael Vartan, who are sub-par students concoct a plan to get their other roommate Rand, Randall Batinkoff, to kill himself!Rand a nasty and arrogant creep who's constituently humiliating his girlfriend Natalie,Tamara Craig Thomas, in public and making a complete a** of himself is the perfect candidate to knock off with nobody, not even his family members, even missing him.Even though at first he thought it was a joke on Tim's part Chris reluctantly goes along with the plan to do Rand in.
It's then that things start to get a bit, to put it mildly, out of hand with Chris not willing to get, feeling that he didn't earn it, his well deserved 4.0 average and his partner in crime Tim doing everything he can to implicate him in Rands murder!Tim goes as far as staging a tryst with Chris' girlfriend Emma, Keri Russell, for Chris to see in order to get him go to the cops and confess not only his but Tim's crime!
While all this is going on Rand's body is never recovered and thus making it impossible for both Tim and Chris to get their coveted 4.0 average and thus being eligible to enter Harvard or Yale!The movie really gets ridicules in it's myriad of twists and turns that are so incomprehensible that their about as illogical as subatomic Quantom reality is towards modern Newtonian physics!
As an inspiring film-maker myself I'm always a sucker for finding a lot of good movies that seem to go unnoticed, and Dan Rosen certainly is an inspiration.This film focuses on a college in which two of three roommates have heard of a rumor that will allow them to pass with straight A grades if their 3rd just so happens to commit suicide.
Knowing that this will never happen, a plan is made to purposely off one of the three, and set it up to appear as a suicide.The plot then thickens, the trust between the two of them slowly begins to fade away and the days begin getting creepier, full of events that could have never been suspected.Dan Rosen had the luck of getting a very well cast to bring his excellent written film to the screen, including Matthew Lillard, who gives a damn fine performance as Tim, and many other very well known actors Overall, this was a great film for first timer Dan Rosen, The movie was written to deliver entertainment and full of exciting twists of dark comedy through the whole way, and is a very fun in every way.
needless to say, it rocks its well deserved 9 out of 10.Also recommended films in my opinion would be Highway, SLC Punk!, Entropy, and the very similar film "Dead Man On Campus" that follows a very close plot to this movies situation, but is taken more on the comedy side..
What really makes this movie is the razor sharp script, mainly for Lillard's character who has some excellent and very amusing scenes (how he cons a fellow student out of $10 springs to mind).
This film is made by a great Matthew Lillard (Scream) performance, who is guaranteed freak you out totally.
Add a complex and twisting plot that keeps you guessing until the very end and you've got a very good film.
Good plot with lots of twists and turns and an excellent soundtrack.
I`m shocked to see all these people commenting on what a clever plot this movie has, with intelligent twists....have you people very short memory span ?
Maybe if they had made a 5 minute short...or if there were some sort of parallell univers theory..just kidding.The movie is also a very bad mixture of several genres, thriller, horror, comedy, drama.
OK, this movie starts out like a really bad college movie...but the ending is great.
but the thing i really love about this movie is....it was filmed at my school!
the movie has a really nice twist at the end, and the acting is pretty good.
I just don't understand why they call this movie The Curve, when i always thought it was called Dead Man's Curve.
I could play the part of Tim. The character Matthew Lillard was on the movie.
The film is a lot of fun, and Matthew Lillard gets to play a creep just like he did in 1996's Scream.
A surprisingly involving serious-thriller version of "Dead Man on Campus" about some guys who get rid of their roommate in exchange for sympathetic straight 'A's at the college where they're failing.
An empty feeling may ensue during the credits, though, as plot holes so big that even an oblivious entertainment-junkie square like me recognizes come to mind, like why would Felicity get with Tim -- then later have a quiet, apologetic moment with boyfriend (and story protagonist) Chris -- if their real deal at the end were true?
Brilliant and clever film based around a university myth that if your room mate commits suicide you automatically graduate with grade A's to compensate.Tim and Chris are two guys with dreams of getting into Harvard.
The two guys decide to murder their room mate and make it look like suicide so they can get the grades they need to get on in life.That is really all that can be said about this movie without giving too much away.
Dead Man's Curve is fantastically cunning and has enough twists and turns to keep anybody interested..
With an attractive cast and lots of plot twists there are alluring things about this film (especially the beautiful Keri Russell).
This is one of those films where every time you think you have the plot all figured out, things change.
That can make a film great (e.g. LA Confidential), but in this case none of the characters are all that sympathetic, and when the mysteries are finally revealed at the end, the viewer is left confused.
Matthew Lillard is great at playing semi-psychotic characters, but he and Russell can't save a film suffering from lack of a good script..
The film is not dull ,however,thanks to Matthew Lillard's funny face and to his excellent over-the -top playing (already excellent in "scream" ).His young co -stars are not as gifted as he is.Outside Lillard,the best characters are the chancellor and the shrink ,a pair of idiots who get fooled every time they show up.The way Tim manipulates all the people around is delightful..
The immense cliff, the lighthouse, and the rocky beach below would all indicate the ocean, but it is supposed to be a (stagnant, tide changing) river(!?)  I only mention this, because the movie has an incredible lack of attention to detail.The plot concerns two college roommates, reminiscent of the prep school snobs in Hitchcock's "Rope", who plan to do in their roommate to get the 4.0 grades the school gives to roommates of suicide victims.
But, unlike the Hitchcock classic, the plot here starts out strong, but becomes horribly convoluted by the end.With high production values, and beautiful young stars, in the Scream mold, the movie isn't a total waste of time, but all the style in the world can't hide a plot that collapses like a house of cards under close examination..
This is one of those self-satisfied movies where you're never really sure who's good and who's bad, but by the end you're quite sure you no longer care.
The movie is clever at times and has some style, but it's so plot-twist happy, when the credits roll you have nothing to show for the emotional investments you've made and the sympathies you've built up for certain characters.
(Unless it's done with an oblique faithfulness to character as in "The Sixth Sense".) Not to mention the fact that, evn though these are smart, high-achieving college kids, their machinations and manipulations are so needlessly labyrinthine and everything falls so perfectly in place for them - it's just laughably improbable.Matthew Lillard from "Scream" has the juiciest part and, while he's not an uninteresting actor, he's always SO manic, SO over-the-top, you have to wonder about the guy.
This movie started out showing a little promise with some clever in-jokes but any favorable response from me was dissipated as the unbelievable situations unfolded and I saw more of the thoroughly obnoxious and loathsome characters that populate the film.
The three dudes are: psycho Matthew Lillard (as Tim), impotent Michael Vartan (as Chris), and contemptible Randall Batinkoff (as Rand).Their pretty blonde girlfriends, fickle Keri Russell (as Emma) and possibly pregnant Tamara Craig Thomas (as Natalie), are also roommates.
Debuting director Dan Rosen's "Dead Man's Curve" characters definitely need a college shrink; and, this is the job filled by nicotine-addicted Dana Delany (as Dr. Ashley).
Re-titled "The Curve", it has noting to do with the Jan & Dean's death drag classic played over the closing credits.**** Dead Man's Curve (1/24/98) Dan Rosen ~ Matthew Lillard, Michael Vartan, Randall Batinkoff.
Also, there are some pretty good setups and twists and surprises that are decently done throughout the movie.
At a college Chris (Michael Vartan) wants to get into Harvard--but isn't getting the grades.
His roommate Tim (Matthew Lillard) wants the same but also doesn't have the grades.
The plot is based on the Urban Myth that the roommates of college student that commits suicide automatically get given straight A's to ameliorate the trauma of the incident.
So two students get together to murder their roommate and pass it off as a suicide just so that they can claim their top grades.This film was billed on my TV station as a black comedy; and given the basic plot there was a lot of potential for some good dark humor.
This movie was fun to watch in the sense that some of the acting was decent.
I mean trying to kill someone to make it look like a suicide to pass a class, come on that sucks.
Based on this movie, he's a sure thing."Film noir" has been at a low in the 90s, with no new directors or ideas coming out.
It is a relief to see something this fresh and unique and a chance for a new director to make their mark.When most movies have plot twists, you can usually see that there are plot twists coming, and you can usually even tell ahead of time what the plots twists are going to be but this was a movie that surprised me with all of the plot twists, each of which helped to build to an absolutely thrilling climax!!I can just not say enough about Matthew Lillard.
In times when it is said that the "Method Acting" school is out of date, Matthew Lillard goes so deep into his character that you fear for his sanity, and maybe even that of his family!I can not wait to see him as "Shaggy" in the up coming movie of "Scooby Doo" but I would wait for that if they would wait and make a killer sequel to "THE CURVE"..
Matthew Lillard's performance is quirky and very entertaining, but the single reason to see the film is for an early scene which can only be described as spoofing _The Deer Hunter_ with a popular college drinking game.
Leave it to some college kids to figure out a way to get into prestigious schools with little intelligence to justify the artificially inflated grades given to them in order to appease the ordeals they've been through.This is the premise of Dan Rosen's thriller "Dead Man's Curve".
Mr. Rosen trying to capitalize on other movies directed to younger audiences, created a story with many twists and turns.
Chris, it turns out has done some planning on his own, really wants to get rid of Tim.The intense Matthew Lillard gives an over the top performance as Tim, the man at the center of the story.
I mean trying to kill someone to make it look like a suicide to pass a class, come on that sucks." Uh, sure.
Matthew Lillard, whom I have been watching since his first thus-billed role (in _Serial_Mom_) is honing his skills to be The Creepiest Man in Movies.
This movie has a very good script and the acting is great.
This movie starts out when Tim (Matt Lillard) and his roommate Chris find out if their roommate commits suicide, you automatically get a 4.0.
I get a kick out of Mathew Lillard's wackiness, so this movie was enjoyable, but by the time it's over it has seriously weakened itself with its desperate plot contrivances.
It's suspenseful to see Tim's (played by Lillard) obnoxious behavior after pushing his room-mate, Rand, off of the cliff (beginning of the movie, not a spoiler).
But the movie goes awry when it tries too hard to force twists & turns into the plot.
"The Curve" is a pretty good movie, even if I think it's rather confusing at times.
That spoiled much of the movie for me as I expected several and not just one turn, so the ending didn't come as a surprise to me..
Did you hear the myth that if your college room mate commits suicide,that you get an automatic 4.0 GPA?Well,for two friends,Tim and Chris,it becomes their one way ticket to Harvard.But getting away with it will be the hard part.I just seen this movie,and thought it was great!And it probably gives college students crazy ideas of killing their room mates.I found it confusing at first,but everything makes sense with a shocking twist ending,where the tables are turned one last time.So,if you like myths,Scream and of course,hotties,then you'll probably enjoy this movie..
Quite a good little dark-humored college mystery film, with an awful lot of twists, that leaves you a bit mind-boggled at the end trying to make some sense out of it.
In a day when it's been announced that Pink & Renee Zellwenger will both play Janis Joplin in two seperate films (5th April 2004), it feels almost fitting that british television would show one part of another double act of movies.In "The Curve" (or "Dead Man's Curve" as it was known in the United Kingdom) two roommates (Matthew Lillard & Michael Vartan) decide to murder their third roommate (Randall Batinkoff).
By setting the murder to look like a suicide, the two believe they'll be given the College's sympathies and given a 4.0 Grade Average for the Semester.
Events sadly don't turn out as they seem."The Curve" was released in the same year (although I'm not sure about exact timing) as "Dead Man On Campus", and truthfully I don't think it's as good.
Matthew Lillard appears to come into a lot of praise for this movie off people, but personally I question his ability in it.