The Bridge Curse (2020) Review: A Familiar Campus Legend Hides a Twisting Mystery

 

The Bridge Curse  | 2020 | 1h 28m
Original Title: Nü gui qiao (女鬼橋)
Genre: Horror / Mystery / Thriller | Country: Taiwan
Director: Lester Hsi | Writers: Keng-Ming Chang, Po-Hsiang Hao
Cast: Ning Chang, Joe Hsieh, Cheng Ko, etc.
IMDb: 5.3
My Rating: 7/10

A reporter investigates the legendary curse of a university bridge, where a group of students mysteriously died, only to uncover a secret that was never meant to be discovered.

Warning:

Contains scenes of violence and strong language.

What if the ghost is not the only thing hiding the truth?

That was the thought that stayed with me while watching The Bridge Curse (2020). At first, I expected a fairly familiar campus horror story: a group of students, an abandoned bridge, an old legend, and a supernatural presence that appears after they break the rules. But the film gradually becomes more than a ghost story. The mystery keeps changing shape, and just when I thought I had understood what was happening, the story gave me another piece of the puzzle.

A reporter is assigned to investigate a supposedly haunted bridge at a university. Four years earlier, a group of students were found dead there, and the investigation can only be conducted during a specific period that coincides with February 29, which occurs only once every four years.

The story then takes us back to the students involved in the original incident.

De Chuan Ji (JC Lin) and five of his friends—Ru Meng, Hsin Chiao, Yu Ching, Song Guei, and Wen Yao—decide to organize a campus initiation event for new students, similar to a night of testing courage. They choose an abandoned bridge surrounded by one of the university's most famous supernatural legends. They want their university's ghost story to be more impressive than those told by students at other universities.

Wen Yao is chosen to perform the dare while the others stream and record everything. But there is one important rule: they must never count the stairs. According to the legend, if the mysterious fourteenth step appears, a ghost will appear behind them. They are also forbidden from turning around after reaching that step.

Wen Yao ignores the warning and starts counting.

His friends panic and try to stop him. Then, suddenly, Wen Yao disappears.

The situation becomes even more frightening when the others accidentally look behind them after hearing a strange noise. Yet they still struggle to believe the legend is real. They assume that Wen Yao is simply playing a prank.

Unfortunately, the terror that follows them feels far too real.

As the reporter investigates the case, strange details begin to emerge, eventually revealing a secret much more dangerous than a simple ghost story.

So what really happened to the students?

The first thing that attracted me to The Bridge Curse is its inspiration. The film is based on the legend of a haunted bridge at Tunghai University, and I always find this kind of horror interesting because it starts with a story that already feels like something people could tell each other in real life.

But adapting a legend into a film is not easy. When a story is already familiar to many people, the film has to offer more than simply showing the legend on screen. It has to create its own identity while still keeping the elements that made the original story interesting.

For me, The Bridge Curse manages to do that through its mystery.

The film opens with a mysterious scene that immediately made me curious. I also like the way the characters and other elements are introduced, almost as though the beginning itself is already part of the larger puzzle.

There is an early scene that appears again later in the film, and I actually like that decision. It encourages us to rethink something we thought we had already understood. Unfortunately, some details in the repeated scene do not remain completely consistent, so the effect is not as strong as it could have been.

The livestream is another example.

The students' livestream eventually becomes important evidence after they disappear. But when I look at what is displayed on the streaming screen, some details seem to be missing, especially the number of viewers. It may sound like a very small thing, but when the livestream is presented as evidence, I naturally expect those details to be more carefully handled.

There is another moment that bothered me a little. During the livestream, Hsin Chiao drops her phone when something frightening suddenly happens. Yet the video later appears to have been uploaded, and in the following scene at the dormitory, Hsin Chiao is already holding the phone again.

I kept wondering how she got it back.

It is a small detail, but I tend to notice these things because horror becomes more convincing when the internal logic remains consistent.

The story uses a back-and-forth timeline, so I think The Bridge Curse requires more attention than a straightforward horror film. There are several twists, and I enjoyed the feeling of having to reconstruct what happened rather than simply waiting for the next scare.

Around three-quarters into the film, I actually thought I had already figured out the ending. I felt as though I knew where the story was going. Then the film introduced another twist that I did not expect.

I enjoyed that more than I expected.

Instead of simply giving me a surprise for the sake of shock, the ending made me go back mentally and reconnect the earlier pieces of the story. Suddenly, details that had seemed ordinary became more meaningful.

The supernatural legend itself is also interesting. The idea that the number of stairs can mysteriously increase when someone counts them reminded me of Whispering Corridors: Wishing Stairs (2003), which also uses a similar staircase legend.

That similarity did not stop me from enjoying the film, although it did make me notice how familiar this particular type of supernatural idea can feel in Asian horror.

The acting is decent overall. I would not say that anyone gives a particularly extraordinary performance throughout the film, but the cast does not make the story difficult to watch either. At the same time, I think the film could have pushed its horror much further. There are moments when the tension is already there, but the film does not always take full advantage of it.

The scene that stayed with me most involves Yu Ching and Hsin Chiao being alone in the dormitory while trying to escape from the ghost. They eventually end up on the rooftop, where the situation becomes even more frightening.

Yu Ching immediately starts looking for somewhere to hide, especially after the rooftop door suddenly closes. Hsin Chiao, meanwhile, tries to stay calm and find another way out.

I found this scene particularly effective because the fear comes not only from the ghost but also from the feeling of being trapped. There is nowhere obvious to run, and every second seems to make the situation worse.

Chiao Yuan-yuan's performance as Yu Ching also stands out to me in this scene. Among the performances in the film, I think she does the best job of showing fear and frustration through her expressions, body language, and dialogue. Her reactions feel natural enough that I can actually sense the panic she is experiencing.

The line, “Are you sure you want to live on? It's a high price to pay,” also stayed with me.

At first, it sounds like a threatening line from a horror film. But the more I think about it, the more it feels connected to something beyond survival. Sometimes surviving a terrible experience does not mean everything is over. The person who survives may still have to carry fear, guilt, memories, or consequences afterward.

That makes the idea of survival feel more complicated.

And perhaps that is why I find The Bridge Curse more interesting as a mystery than as a conventional ghost story. The supernatural elements may attract us at first, but the mystery keeps us looking for explanations.

Overall, I think The Bridge Curse (2020) is still an enjoyable and interesting horror film, especially for viewers who like supernatural stories based on urban legends. It has some inconsistencies in its details, and I think the horror could have been developed more strongly, but the nonlinear storytelling and unexpected twists give the film something more than a simple haunted-bridge story.

For me, the biggest appeal is the way the film encourages us to question what we think we already know. We may believe we understand what happened, only to discover another explanation waiting underneath it.

That made me think about life outside the film too. We often create our own version of a story based on the first information we receive. We decide who is right, who is wrong, and what really happened. But sometimes, the truth is hidden in details we were too quick to ignore.

Perhaps that is the real lesson I take from The Bridge Curse: how often do we think we already understand someone's story simply because we have only seen the first version of it?

(Aluna Uwie)

Previously published on Alunauwie.com.

"This article was originally written in Indonesian and has been adapted into English for international readers."

 

Read Also:
The Bridge Curse 2: Ritual Review, the sequel that continues exploring Taiwanese legends, rituals, and supernatural mysteries
Interchange Review, a Southeast Asian mystery film blending folklore, culture, and supernatural elements
Sehidup Semati Review, an Indonesian horror film that explores fear through psychological and social realities