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Review: The Cure: The Show of a Lost World
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I will admit, I am not unbiased in this review. The Cure have been an active part of my life since I found them in high school, and based on the software big companies are trying to convince me I'm enjoying and is TOTALLY not spying on me, if you combine the time I've spent listening to them over the year it totals around a month of my time. Pretty much every day of the year I gave them a listen, so I have a bias, but that said, it's not for nothing.
Concert films have been around almost as long as sound has been a part of cinema, the first being Adventures in Music back in 1944. The genre has grown and morphed with concerts like The Band's The Last Waltz and Elvis' Elvis: That's the Way it Is in the 70s, and the ones that stuck in my head as a youth were Depeche Mode's 101, a hybrid documentary/concert film, and Duran Duran's Arena, which is a weird art concept/concert film.
In the last 20 years, these films have gone from a fun aside to the only way many people will see some of their favourite artists. Many "for the people" artists have done very little to protect their fans from predatory ticket practices, so with tickets to Bruce Springsteen or Taylor Swift going for 4- or even 5-digit valuations, many have turned to these concert films as a way to see their favourite artists without having to take out a second mortgage. It's a far cry from the days 20 bucks would get you in to see a band touring the world – though I must say, The Cure's Robert Smith did make Ticketmaster cap ticket prices, made sure there were tickets as cheap as 20 bucks, blocked resale, and forced Ticketmaster to refund exorbitant fees. So it CAN be done. (See, not without cause.)
The Cure toured throughout 2022 and 2023, culminating in a livestreamed concert at Troxy in London on November 1, 2024, immediately leading into the release of their latest album Songs of a Lost World, arguably one of their best albums, on par with Disintegration and Pornography. December 11, 2025, they released the concert in cinemas around the world for one night only as a lead up to the release of the DVD and Blu-ray of the concert on December 12. As someone who saw them twice in two different cities within three days of one another, I had to be there, so I watched the fan club newsletter, and the moment tickets dropped I snapped up a pair. I was right to do so. The Cineplex was almost entirely sold out with a multigenerational crowd of fans ranging from teenagers who found their parents (or maybe grandparents) Cure vinyl to middle-aged Claude from Degrassi all the way to 60-something first wave fans who, while excited, didn't get up because their knees hurt (I resemble that last group though not QUITE in that age bracket yet).
If you saw the livestream on YouTube back in 2024, you know what to expect – an almost 3-hour tour of their music starting with their at-that-time unreleased album on the eve of its release, followed by an hour and a half of their best and brightest. Robert Smith and the Cure have three modes, introspective existential reflections on pain, songs where Robert is besotted with Mary and Robert being a silly Billy. Most casual listeners kind of forget that last category, but some of their greatest tunes come from a mix of their third mode and one of their other two modes (I'm looking at "Love Cats", "Lullaby", "Friday I'm In Love", and my favourite, "So What").
The show was broken into four parts. The first of part of the 2 hour and 47 minute concert film was low energy. The Cure are their best when working in a theme, and the theme of this album was grief over the loss of loved ones, so it was expectedly low energy (though there were certainly some bangers on the album like "Drone:Nodrone"). This portion fell very much into the existential dread mode of The Cure. The second portion was pretty much dedicated in spirit if not in word to Robert's wife and high school sweetheart, Mary. In the home stretch at the end the third portion is a mix of Robert as a silly Billy and the first two modes, only to end with a solid last leg all being silly and high energy.
Over the years, like any group of friends and co-workers who've been together for almost 46 years, there have been ups and downs. That's inevitable, and it's been seen on the stage at times with members leaving and not returning for some time, or the dynamic being tense when a tour has been wearing at their nerves. All understandable, but despite recently completing their first tour in 16 years (and rumoured to be one of their last before retiring the band in 2029 at 50 years of making music together), the energy built over the course of the evening from the intense and dark vibes at the top, and Robert Smith, Simon Gallup, Jason Cooper, Roger O'Donnell, and Reeves Gabrels all got moments to shine (with the exception of Perry Bamonte who seemed very low energy to the side of the stage, but I suspect this was due to him not being on the album).
By the end of the concert, they moved from dour and still to lively and smiling. The film was shot simply with a limited number of cameras that were used effectively, capturing the performances but more importantly capturing the little details like someone taking a sharpie to the Roland CUBE amps and scratching out the bottom of the B so they all read CURE or the BAD WOLF tape on Simon's amp in the same font as from the Doctor Who episode. (Simon is a Whovian who during Lollapalooza a few years back had a sticker on his guitar referencing his phone box and the Weeping Angels.) What brought me the most joy was watching a bunch of friends with varying degrees of cool dad/uncle energy smiling, laughing, and having fun on stage together after more years of making music than some of us have been alive.
This was an incredible experience I'm glad to have had. It's likely never to be seen on the big screen again, but as I mentioned it is being released to the public December 12. Sold out on the official Cure website, it is already popping up on eBay, but there are official distributors in many countries, so if you want to check this out you can pick up a Blu-ray or DVD for about $30 from local vendors (or Amazon if you must).
Tags: The Cure, Songs of a Lost World, The Show of a Lost World, Robert Smith, Simon Gallup, Jason Cooper, Roger O'Donnell, Reeves Gbrels, Perry Bamonte, The Cure: The Show of a Lost World
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