Curve, Julianne Hough Dancing with the Psycho

Julianne Hough is talented, beautiful, and the epitome of glamorous. This dancer/actress is an unlikely subject for this blog, but.....here she is!  Can our elegant actress come across as a beaten, bloodied and humiliated damsel in distress? Yes....so today we look at 2015's "Curve" in which she'll turn in a most un-glamorous performance in a film with a fair amount of blood and gore...and a really seedy psycho.

Mallory (Hough) is travelling to Denver where she will wed her BF. Uh oh...she is having second thoughts, and it appears the groom-to-be is a real heel.  Giving herself time to sort things out, she takes back roads on her journey.  Her Ford Bronco then breaks down in the middle of nowhere and guess who just happens to come by? Yep....Mr. Psycho (Teddy Sears). Initially, Mallory is hot for him. You can see in her eyes she loves his abs and pecs, and might feel this man is all the man her fiance is not. I guess Mallory has never seen a slasher movie, and gives him a ride after he fixes her car.  Naturally, he soon exhibits sociopath behavioral traits, like talking dirty to our beautiful damsel. When he refuses to get out of the car, Mallory slams on the breaks which causes her Bronco to go off the road and land upside down.

Uh oh, Mr. Psycho survived the crash, but Mallory is stuck inside the Bronco upside down, with her leg pinned behind the steering wheel. Now Mallory is at the mercy of this fiend.  He torments her and forces her to talk about sex.  Unable to set herself free, Mallory must use her brain to turn the tables on this monster playing head games with her.  He leaves her to die of exposure and starvation, and now Mallory turns into a survivalist finding ingenious ways to find drink and killing...well...never mind..for food. Will Mallory be able to out psyche a psycho? If she does get free, will she turn psycho on our psycho? Is there a dance left in our put upon fiance/damsel?

Directed nicely by Iain Saftley, this is a gritty film. When the psycho gives Mallory a hack-saw to saw off her pinned leg, we gasp in horror that Julianne Hough might never dance again. However evil we believed our madman to be, this is retched up several degrees over the final 20 minutes when we find out what he is indeed capable of doing.  Available on Netflix, not for the squeamish, see "Curve."