Showtime’s new series, The Curse, can rightfully be called “cinematic.”

It is from the movie company A24, so the description is likely apt, but more validation for the show’s tone and production values came when the show’s creators screened the first three hours of the program, which stars Emma Stone and Nathan Fielder, at the New York Film Festival Thursday night, leaving the audience laughing – and gasping.

The showing was a first for the NYFF, but A24 has debuted a series at a film festival before; its miniseries Irma Vep was screened at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival.

Fielder and Stone play Asher and Whitney Siegel, who hope their house-flipping series, called Philanthropy, will bring them Chip and Joanna Gaines-level stardom. Their renovation show has a more charitable angle than most HGTV output; the couple is trying to become famous for bringing jobs and eco-friendly homes to a community wracked by the twin scourges of unemployment and gentrification.

However, their lives and careers are turned upside down after they stage a photo op of Asher giving a little girl some cash on camera, only to snatch the $100 bill back after he thinks recordng has stopped. The young girl levels a curse at Asher that then seems to extend to the whole benighted project and everyone working on it.

The show’s first episode has the couple setting up shop in Española, New Mexico to flip houses and convert them into green homes for the struggling residents, all for their new reality show being overseen by an ingratiating producer (Benny Safdie) who is fighting his own demons.

“This is one of the most exciting things I’ve seen this year,” direct Dennis Lim told the crowd before the showing began. “Everything about The Curse screams cinema to me.”

He continued, saying “The Curse is as brilliant, wild, perverse, hilarious, uncomfortable, and anxiety-inducing as you’d expect,” he said, alluding to the previous works of creators Fielder (The Rehearsal, Nathan For You) and Safdie (Uncut Gems, Good Time). Both were in attendance at the festival.

The Curse also stars Barkhad Abdi, Corbin Bernsen and Constance Shulman, and will be released Friday, November 10th on Paramount+ before making its on-air debut on Showtime on Sunday, November 12th.