NFT Falls Flat

1 star

Before sitting down to watch NFT: Cursed Images, I had no idea what an NFT even was. Fortunately, there is a long opening scene where the characters sit around mouthing a lot of expository dialogue to help a neophyte feel less ignorant. Unfortunately, the scene did nothing to make me care about NFTs or the people on the screen yapping about them. So I couldn’t wait for them to start dying.

And that’s not a spoiler. The title gives it all away.

The curse begins when the wanna be NFT tycoons receive a link to a collection called Crypto Horrors, promising profit, status, and social clout. The fact that the images in the Crypto collection are bitmapped messes that look like the digital equivalent of drawings from a first-grade art class is ignored. Luckily, the collection is cursed, and soon the digital monsters depicted in the NFTs begin to manifest in the real world, stalking and attacking their owners one by one.

It’s a premise even a Luddite could like. Or so it reads on paper. On the screen, it falls far short. The good news is that the Crypto Horror creatures look a lot better in real life than they do on the victims’ phones. But that’s not enough. The bad news is that they may look better, but they still move like they’re bitmapped. Writer/director Jonas Odenheimer tries every trick he can come up with, from fast, choppy editing to unusual, intrusive music, to bring an edge to the killings, but it’s not even enough to distract you from realizing the thrill isn’t just gone; it was never there.