GL84
After surviving a serious car accident, a woman and her brother find themselves undergoing a strange change that leads them to believe they've become werewolves and begin hunting down the one who turned them into the creatures.This one was quite the enjoyable and underrated werewolf effort. What really works for this one is the rather well-down build-up here of the discovery of their powers and condition, affecting each one differently. Allowing her to do better at her job by standing up for herself and tell off her co-workers is a part of this, while the behavior changes are more than enough to give an idea of the change. That comes even further into play when he gets a chance to prove himself a lot more notably with the change in confidence and the change to utilize his enhanced skill- set against his classmates that this one really gets a lot to like about this setup. That's what allows the action here to get the really enjoyable parts from this as these are quite fun all starting with the initial car crash here. The violence of the impact and then rolling down the hill, the race to free the trapped driver and the attack which gets them involved is quite fun and really has a lot going for it as it sets the stage for the later attacks here. The parking garage encounter is certainly fun with a great gimmick of trying to get to safety with the creature trashing car alarms during the stalking as it gets pretty suspenseful at times, and a later scene at the house trying to escape the now-infected dog makes for some decent times here. Still, the films is centered around two big action scenes here as the first one is the big confrontation at the nightclub opening which serves as a fine culmination of the different series of action here with the chilling House of Mirrors stalking, the multitude of brawling in the different rooms against both the human and werewolf forms before getting a great conclusion to it all, and finally the ending brawl here which gets them the chance to really let loose and really force along some great parts taking advantage of their powers. As well with the great practical werewolf look, these here are the positives to make this good enough to overcome the few flaws. These are mostly centered around the film's rather conflicting werewolf here, which is distracting not only with the behavior changes to suit the scenes themselves, going from toying with hated prey to viciously taking out the insignificant victims, and there's a lot to said for the CGI wolf scenes here utilized for scenes that shouldn't be in the first place. The other issue here is the tameness of thee whole affair, really in terms of the kills here which seems like they're far more brutal than what's shown here as this one censors itself way too much. Otherwise, this one was a lot of fun.Rated PG-13: Violence and some Language.
Steve Pulaski
Wes Craven's Cursed is a film that would've been embraced had it been made in the mid-1990's, but because of its inception in the early-to-mid 2000's, it became, in itself, a cursed production. In the 1990's, horror films were a dime-a-dozen, and as there were incredible amounts of slasher films falling into theaters in the 1980's, the direct-to-video market became saturated with a plethora of low-budget features. Killer snowmen, killer gingerbread man, parodies, stalker films, and werewolf horror films lined video store shelves and studios were taking just about any asinine idea for a horror film and running with it. In the early aughts, however, this direct-to-video output slowed and horror became a lessened commodity. There were enough franchises to continue, crossover, and further develop and those are the franchises (Jason X, Freddy vs. Jason, Leprechaun, Child's Play) that got the theatrical/mainstream treatment.Almost any horror film released in the mid-to-late 2000's was forced to be cut from an R-rated film to a PG-13 rating, in an act of optimism by studios to snag the high school crowd on a Friday night. Such films like Prom Night and When a Stranger Calls, remakes of gritty slashers in the 1970's and 1980's, were watered down significantly to bear a PG-13 rating. Wes Craven, despite giving the horror industry one of its most successful franchises and characters the genre has ever seen, on top of a plethora of other films, found Cursed, one of his rarer, more contemporary productions, victim to reshoots, casting difficulties, a slew of production drama, and script-rewrites. What was going to be a more evident revitalization of Scream and teen horror turned into a bargain bin werewolf film that is narratively and visually crippled by a PG-13 rating.And, despite all the problems this film faced and the messiness of the end product, Cursed is perplexingly fun and passable as a piece of teen horror. We focus on brother and sister Ellie and Jimmy Myers (Christina Ricci and Jesse Eisenberg), who experience a series of strange events after hitting a mysterious animal and crashing their vehicle into another car on a highway late at night. After the victim in the other vehicle gets mauled by the mysterious, wolf-like animal, Ellie and Jimmy find themselves experiencing a wide variety of bizarre behaviors, such as increased sense of smell, Pentagram-shaped sores on their hands, appetites for blood, allergies to silver, and others, leading them, particularly Jimmy, to believe they are turning into werewolves. With other colleagues of them exhibiting strange behaviors in addition, it could also be a sweeping epidemic that is slowly taking over the local teenage population.Cursed is less a straight-forward film and more a series of quirky vignettes in which increasingly strange things happen to certain characters. In one scene, Ellie has a complete meltdown in the bathroom of her workplace, resulting in red eyes, bloody hands resembling claws, and a distinct satisfaction at the sight, smell, and taste of blood. Jimmy, on the other hand, is bullied by the homophobic wrestling jock Bo (Milo Ventimiglia), who consistently pesters him to join the team so he can face off and ostensibly defeat Jimmy, further humiliating him. It isn't until Jimmy gains these unprecedented abilities that he puts Bo and his band of jocks to shame.Cursed often seems like Scream without the genre-parody aspect and the humor, and screenwriter Kevin Williamson, who worked on much of the Scream franchise with Craven, seems to be trying to give teens that same sense of ribald fun that he did with the original films. To Williamson's credit, the film works because it keeps the viewer interested at the transformation the two leads are constantly undergoing and the characters on display are developed a bit more than your run-of-the-mill film. The error here is that the film is handcuffed in asserting itself in terms of its scares and its display of horror because the violence is so muted. Even the dialog - which I'm told is modified in addition to some of the events of the film in the much-discussed "unrated cut" as opposed to the PG-13/theatrical cut I watched - seems modified greatly at the last minute, as if the characters are walking on eggshells and picking and choosing their words carefully. With that, it's also interesting to note how, despite Dimension Films and Miramax keeping this film as muted and mild as possible, they let the recurring gay subtext and theme in the film carry through much of the central storyarch.At the end of it all, as messy as the final product can be and as underwhelming as it occasionally feels, Cursed is one of the more enjoyable horror films of this time, squeezing itself next to When a Stranger Calls in the category of satisfying PG-13 horror films. Craven doesn't find his trademark genre-inventiveness, mainly because no matter how much he pretends, he's still spelunking through charted territory, but you get the sense that having Williamson hold the pen again makes this project feel like a spin off of Scream for him. The fun and thrills are present despite the occasional shortcomings, which is enough for me to shrug and simply wink at you, dear reader, when it comes to recommending this film.Starring: Christina Ricci, Jesse Eisenberg, Joshua Jackson, Judy Greer, and Milo Ventimiglia. Directed by: Wes Craven.
thesar-2
Ouch.Though it doesn't prove to be Wes Craven's worst film (14 years strong, 'The People under the Stairs' still holds that title), it's pretty damn close. I would have stuck with the original working title, "Cursed: Teen Wolf Three."Granted, they did show the beast (something they barely did in the highly superior 'Ginger Snaps') however the 'Van Helsing's wolf-man/teddy bear was far more unique and frightening.Since I apparently can't count past 59, I stopped counting the flaws about half-way through. But then couldn't help myself in the latter part, including the chick that apparently turned into the wolf at the party, shredding her clothes, and then turned back, got new clothes, and then shred those too.Also, when she died (which according to this movie's legend, she couldn't have been killed that way -- but let's skip over that obvious flaw) she was facing upward as the dead werewolf, but in fetal position when they found her nude human form.Don't even get me started on the werewolf giving them the birdie. Ouch. Or the entire motivation for the killer werewolf just bent on getting Joshua Jackson all to herself. On the flip-side.. I really can't blame her; I probably would have done something similar. He was a perk for the movie, but only for eye-candy. At first, of course I was offended by the homophobic lines these assholes were saying, but after the 2nd or 3rd scene, I was waiting for the wrestling captain to come out.Watching this movie, made me want to recommend Ginger Snaps (1, 2 or 3), Wolf, or my personal favorite The Howling, to all my friends.And if they ask me about Cursed, I'll recommend Ginger Snaps (1, 2 or 3), Wolf, or my personal favorite The Howling.
