The Curve (film)

Plot

After hearing of a school policy granting anyone whose roommate commits suicide an automatic 4.0 GPA (see: Pass by catastrophe), Harvard Law School aspirants Tim (Matthew Lillard) and Chris (Michael Vartan) plot to kill their roommate Rand and make it look like suicide. They're successful, but when the fallout breeds unforeseen consequences and two local detectives close in, guilt and mistrust fester, jeopardizing Chris's relationship with his girlfriend Emma (Keri Russell) and the roommates' futures.

Cast

Production

The Curve was filmed at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, and screened at the 1998 Sundance Film Festival as an Official Selection. The film was renamed The Curve after its Sundance premiere to avoid confusion with the film Dead Man on Campus, a comedy with a similar pass by catastrophe premise about two college roommates who try to get another roommate to commit suicide which was released the same year. In the UK and Australia, however, the film was released as Dead Man's Curve.

Soundtrack

Prior to the start of filming, writer/director Dan Rosen and score composer Shark made a mixtape of songs they were considering for use in the film, which Rosen gave to the principal actors in The Curve to establish the film's tone. When editor Glenn Garland put together the first edit of the film, he used music from this mix tape as "temp music," and many of the songs ended up in the final film.

A song-based soundtrack album featuring songs from The Curve was released in Japan through Toho Records and in North America through Chromatic Records.

The North American album featured 14 tracks composed by Shark, an aria from the 1892 opera La Wally and the songs "Die" by Starbelly, "Bela Lugosi's Dead" by Bauhaus and "Wake Up Sad (remix)" by Wild Colonials.