Driving home after visiting her boyfriend, crew member Ellie Myers picks up her younger brother Jimmy from high school. While heading down a highway in Los Angeles, California, the two accidentally hit another car, and oddly enough, a large, unseen animal. They are shocked to discover that the passenger of the other vehicle is still alive, but before they can rescue the young woman, she is dragged out of her driver's seat by a creature that they only catch a glimpse of. In the ensuing chaos, Ellie and Jimmy are cut by the beast's claws, but the police and EMTs arrive too late to save the other motorist, who has been torn to shreds. Though the two relatives are spooked, everything still seems to be normal. However, when Ellie and Jimmy begin to act rather peculiar, the latter digs around and contemplates the fact that they may now bare the mark of a beast; one which transforms at the sight of a full moon and is driven to kill.
You know, Cursed isn't THAT bad of a movie.
Wait, before you scoff at me for being too soft, let me explain.
If you were to look for a more appropriately-titled flick for something such as this marathon that I do every year, one of your first and easiest picks would be the late Wes Craven's only foray into the werewolf genre. As for why this was his lone attempt at making a movie about lycanthropy? Well, that can be attributed to an unusually large amount of what can only be described as "frequent studio interference." Or, to quote another film distributed by the same company as Cursed, "Fucking Miramax." The original script for this picture, which was conceived back in the year 2000, had some similarities to the final results seen here, but with a lot of notable changes in the cast and backgrounds to their characters. For starters, there was no sibling angle, as there were three random strangers who were brought together as the result of a random werewolf attack, and a possible love triangle would build throughout its first and middle acts. No, several executives thought that this just wasn't marketable enough. How about just making Christina Ricci (The Addams Family) and Jesse Eisenberg (The Social Network) into orphans with no chemistry and erasing the third character altogether (who was originally supposed to be Skeet Ulrich of Scream fame)?
But it didn't stop there. For nearly two years, a substantial number of alterations were made to Cursed while it was still being recorded by Craven and his crew. Several cast members' parts and/or scenes were erased due to time restraints and scheduling conflicts. These included A Walk To Remember's Mandy Moore (who was replaced by R&B singer Mya), Heather Langenkamp (A Nightmare On Elm Street), Omar Epps (House), and a good handful of other recognizable actors and actresses. Hell, Christina Ricci's character works for former Late Late Show host Craig Kilborn, and by the time of Cursed's theatrical release, her "boss" no longer worked at CBS! Oh, and at least half of the script was rewritten, meaning that much of the film itself had to be re-shot, delaying its release until god knows when. So with all of that tomfoolery that took place behind the scenes, it almost seemed destined to fail, especially when it finally dropped during the first two months of the new year, which is what most would call "dump time" for motion pictures.
And yet, this guy has seen far worse flicks than Cursed, especially considering that I was nervous after hearing of all the critical shellacking that it has received over the years. I won't name a particular person in question, but one critic for a popular website went on to say something akin to "this is the worst werewolf movie ever." Excuse me, but we live in a world where there are EIGHT sequels to The Howling, An American Werewolf In Paris, and VAN FUCKING HELSING. I may have to respectfully disagree with you there. I wonder if he would still stand by that sentence after sitting through the Twilight series? Anyways, I'm getting off topic.
I'm sure that Miramax heads Bob and Harvey Weinstein wanted to present Cursed as the lycanthrope equivalent to writer Kevin Williamson's previously successful series of screenplays that ended up becoming the Scream saga. Unfortunately, the script provided for the final cut lacks the clever meta jokes and wicked sense of humor that was found in those pictures, and whether every single one of these was Williamson's choice or not, the primary odor you smell belongs to him. Noticeably, it falls into the tropes and cliches that riddled his previous projects, including an updated version of his "Barrymore kill" and red herring scenarios that are direct ripoffs of the aforementioned series of films. On the plus side, co-star Eisenberg and some of the supporting cast like Judy Greer (who will always be cast as either a mom or a bitch) do produce a small measure of chuckles here and there. Christina Ricci is written to resemble a mostly straight-laced protagonist, but unlike her slumbering on-screen boyfriend Joshua Jackson (Dawson's Creek), she can actually feign being interested in this experience. So cast-wise, everything turns out slightly better than expected. But behind the camera? Well, that's a different story. Most of Cursed's problems and downfalls come from the realm of post-production, and considering that I watched only the theatrical cut, thereby missing out on so much of its intended blood and gore, oh boy is it bad. There is extremely bad editing that is prominent within the first ten minutes of its running time (though I'm willing to bet that it was due to Miramax's demand to make a PG-13 product out of a very graphic R-rated one), shaky camera techniques that prevent the audience from seeing anything fascinating that comes about from the antagonist's kills, and some of the absolute worst CGI that you'll see from the previous decade. Considering how high the bar had been set by masters of makeup such as Rob Bottin (The Howling) and Rick Baker (An American Werewolf In London), you would think that trying to equal or possibly usurp them would make for a fun challenge. You would be dead wrong. It's a cheap route that produces absolutely no genuine scares from beginning to end, though I suppose that getting to see a cheap-looking computer-generated monster give policemen the middle finger is some sort of compensation.
For all of the hell that Cursed went through during and after production, it's a god damn miracle that it turns out to be fairly watchable. Of course, it's still a deeply flawed movie with problems and continuity goofs that are painfully obvious to anyone with a keen eye, but I still don't think that it makes for a bad time (and most certainly not one that's offensive either). If you've got nothing important to do, or just need an excuse to watch every single movie involving these mythical beasts, it's available to watch on Netflix Instant Streaming and Amazon Prime. You can also buy it (though I wouldn't recommend that) on DVD or Blu-Ray for roughly the same cost as a Flaming Amy's burrito.
And besides, if you come back to me saying that you'd rather watch something like They or Pinocchio's Revenge over this...
Tomorrow, we dive right into what I'd arguably call one of the rougher years for cinematic releases in the territory of horror, and my choice of what to watch should be verifiable proof of it...
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