Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Curse of the Necklace’ on Tubi, a Frightfest About a Busted Family’s Haunted Bauble

Anyone who makes a grave error and turns on The Curse of the Necklace (now streaming on Tubi) will inevitably have the same hey-is-that-Henry-Thomas? moment that I did. And then they’ll pause (or wait for a Tubi commercial break) to confirm via internet that yes, indeed, that’s the guy we’ll love forever because of E.T., and he’s 53 now, and you’ll wish he was turning up in better stuff than Tubi original spookfests with Weekly Reader-ass titles. Which is to say, you should keep your expectations at rock-bottom if curiosity compels you to hit play on this generic timewaster.

THE CURSE OF THE NECKLACE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Be forewarned, life is total ass for everyone in this movie. I’m not sure anyone is ever happy, ever! Now, enjoy their company: We open with a scene in which a woman is tied to a bed, giving birth. Blood covers the sheets. She screams at approx. 800 dB. The baby finally emerges, and the woman’s captors fret for a moment, because the child doesn’t seem to be breathing. Finally, the boy cries. More importantly, the camera makes sure we notice the red-ruby amulet around the mother’s neck. Cut to 30 YEARS LATER, when a cover version of ‘My Girl’ plays on the soundtrack at approx. 780 dB. Why the hell is everything in this movie so got danged loud? Two sisters add to the din – the school bus will be here any second now and Ellen (Violet McGraw) can’t find her pencil box and she finds it in her older sister Judith’s (Madeleine McGraw, Violet’s real-life sister) room and they fight and squabble and yell that they hate each other. Their mother Laura (Sarah Lind) finally gets them too cool off and gets them out the door and then it’s quiet. Thank you, Laura. By the way, it’s 1960-something, if that matters (which it doesn’t).

Next we meet Frank (Henry Thomas), a local cop. He’s rumpling and bumping around the evidence room when he knocks over a box to an unsolved case from, yes, 30 years ago. Inside is, yes, the amulet. Before we go any further with the thing from the tile of the movie, we should ask, who’s Frank? Well, he’s the estranged father of the aforementioned sisters. Not that he wants to be estranged. His and Laura’s marriage is strrrrraaaaaaaiiiinnnnneeddddd, and she kicked him out. He lives in a motel now. Ellen really misses her dad. Judith, being a teenager, is just surly and hostile to whoever is within earshot. Wha happ’n’d? Something vague about Frank being drunk and not wanting Laura to work a job when she wanted to work a job. So Laura got rid of Frank and got a job. Good for Laura.

Frank doesn’t seem like a terrible guy – he just wants to see his kids. He drops by one night and Laura very begrudgingly lets him join them for dinner. Ellen is thrilled to let her dad give her fresh eclairs, but Judith won’t let him buy her affection. He hopes to win back Laura with a gift – what could it be? A new toaster? Some lingerie? A kitten? No! Of course not! It’s the Cursed Necklace! She boots his ass back out, declares the bauble “costume jewelry” and tosses it in the trash. Ellen digs it out and then, all of a sudden, she has an “imaginary friend,” a little boy we see in the corners of the frame, and am I mistaken or does he have a zombiesque pallor? His name is Jonah, and he keeps spooking the pet parakeets. Before you know it, Judith sees the boy too (“He’s really grody” is her hilarious assessment), and then she’s attacked by a woman with a similar complexion, who pins Judith down and vomits blood in her face. It would be a terrible thing if nobody believed these girls when they say something’s very wrong around here, wouldn’t it? But I bet they’ll believe it eventually if you stick around long enough, which is a big ask.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Several dozen exorcism/possession movies, which are rather bountiful now, e.g., The Exorcism or The Deliverance. Or several dozen creepy-little-kid movies, which are also bountiful, e.g., Orphan or Sinister. Oh, and the Treehouse of Horror episode about Bart’s evil twin. 

Performance Worth Watching: Lind brings some legit acting chops to the table, but to what end? Besides scoring some paid work? 

Memorable Dialogue: Frank utters this doozy when Laura finds out he stole a murder necklace from the evidence room: “I washed it off! It could be worth a lot of money!”

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: Welp, ol’ Frank finds out the hard way that you can’t use a little soap and water to wash the curse off a haunted bauble. In his defense, he didn’t know it was cursed, but this is karma for a sexist doof who cheaped out on a gift for his soon-to-be-ex-wife. One assumes that, after apparitional entities knock over the bookcase, and give Ellen a compound fracture, and take up residence inside Judith’s soul, Laura right quickly filed the divorce paperwork – and maybe started paying more attention in church? Then again, Laura isn’t particularly smart either; even after she learns the necklace is cursed, she thinks sticking it in the icebox next to the pork roast will temper its unholy Satanic powers. Not a spoiler: She was wrong! Wrong as HELL.

Good thing Laura didn’t try to destroy it, though. She eventually learns, from an old-lady seer (a ridiculous and thankless role filled by Roma Maffia), that smashing the necklace would only let the evil loose into the world, and they can’t just hide it forever, so their only hope is to contain and control it, or something. I dunno. I feel like the best option would’ve been to call in Nancy Drew or Encyclopedia Brown to solve The Case of the Cursed Necklace, because Old-Lady Seer’s magic herbs and YOUR EVIL IS NOT WELCOME HERE declarations don’t work particularly well. 

I started tuning out this tedious junkola once it started ticking boxes on the cliche checklist: Haunted MacGuffin, check. Lame jump scares, check. Broken family? Check. Quasi-creepy seance? Check. Slow… walks… through… a… dark… house? Check. A medium spouting grave incantations? Check. Grizzled detective who never solved the original case? Check. Tepid flashbacks? Check. Young female possessee levitating off the bed and speaking in a subhuman rasp? Check. The implication that hauntings and possessions and the like can be solved with just a little bit of love? Check. This all adds up to something that’s PG-13-level tame, and not bad-bad enough to be unwatchable — it is boringly competent — or good-bad enough to be campy. Check please!

Our Call: Dozens and dozens of scary movies pop up on streaming services this time of year, but most aren’t as cheap and corny as The Curse of the Necklace. SKIP IT.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.