CURSED (PG-13) **
Directed by Wes Craven. 95 minutes.
Christina Ricci, Judy Greer, Joshua Jackson, Scott Baio and Shannon Elizabeth. Released by Dimension Films.
I was beginning to believe that Cursed was cursed. The film, directed by horror maestro Wes Craven was supposed to be released a few years ago, I believe, and it finally reaches the light of day. It’s a curiosity, alright, but an occasionally fun one and an occasionally familiar one. Craven must have thought that in the world of horror, which, so far this year has taken up nearly fifty percent of the films released, werewolves were not getting their due. This is the first mainstream werewolf movie in a long time, assuming that we automatically forget about Bad Moon and An American Werewolf in Paris from the mid-1990s.
In this film, Christina Ricci plays a young woman whose parents seem to have died. I
say ‘seem to have died’ because we get no real reason why they died or how. This
plot element seems only possible so later violent antics can take place in the
house they both occupy without their parents asking them what in the hell is
going on. Ricci plays an assistant in
Prior to their introduction, we have a semi-cheesy interlude in which Shannon Elizabeth is told by a gypsy at a carnival that she and her friend will be mauled by a wild beast. They take no heed and are mauled by a wild beast. Ricci and her brother happen to be there at the site and are scratched, which we know will lead them to turn into werewolves. All the while, Joshua Jackson is Ricci’s shady boyfriend, who seems to run some sort of Planet Hollywood of the macabre. His job is left vaguely ambiguous as well. There’s also Judy Greer as a bitchy producer and Scott Baio and Craig Kilborn as themselves.
I have probably made Cursed sound very silly and it is, though I’d be at fault to not point out that it has some genuine moments of creativity, a few laughs, a few startles because of scares, a few startles out of bafflement and some enjoyable sequences. One of my favorites involves a fight between a few werewolves in which one crawls around on the ceiling of the house to elude his enemy. Another great moment occurs when Ricci's brother, having been picked on by what seems to be like everyone at his high school, takes on the wrestling team and beats them to a pulp. The film’s strangest moment is surely when a werewolf flips someone off.
Wes Craven has been doing his thing for over thirty years
and he has made much better films than this one (namely The People Under the Stairs and the Scream films) and much worse (The
Hills Have Eyes and Deadly Friend).
The most surprising element of the film is how it managed to receive a PG-13
with its decapitations and blood-splattered corpses. My guess is that executive
producers Bob and Harvey Weinstein did some of their famous wheeling and
dealing. Cursed is a fair movie, but
a decent enough horror film, certainly better than much of this year’s crop so
far- that would include The Boogeyman,
Hide and Seek, White Noise,