Whether you enjoyed the meta revolution that came from the success of Scream, or just thought all the self referential jabs got in the way of the scares, there’s no denying that the fruit of Wes Craven and Kevin Williamson’s labours pimped some much needed life back into the horror genre. However, never let it be said that the powers that be behind Miramax/Dimension wasn’t prepared to beat a dead horse and before you knew it, Williamson was being nudged to penning a succession of similar titles that cast the writer’s knowing eye over a string of sub genres. Not only did he bang out a sequel to his earlier smash hit and offer guidance for the return of Michael Myers for Halloween H20, but he also gave Sci-fi the Scream treatment with Robert Rodriguez’s The Faculty and reteamed with Craven to give classic horror a tongue in cheek spin with Cursed.
The Scream-team tackling post-modern werewolves? Sounds intriguing, right? Well, it might have been if Dimension hadn’t gotten up to their old tricks and delivered one of the most tortured productions of the decade.
On a night featuring a full moon, timid high schooler Jimmy Myers is picked up by his older sister, Ellie, who works as a PA in Hollywood. Both are struggling with the recent death of their parents with Jimmy being bullied at school and Ellie barely managing to cling on with her fingers with her bitchy co-workers as she tries to stabilise her relationship with boyfriend Jake.
However, on their drive home for Mulholland Drive they are involved in a humdinger of a car crash when they hit what appears to be something of a hefty animal which in turn causes another car to careen off the road. While this may prove to be an impressively shitty way to end a shitty week, matters immediately get worse when the beast, seemingly a huge wolf, not only tears the other driver to shreds, but also manages to claw Ellie and Jimmy pretty badly into the bargin.
In the aftermath, Jimmy cries werewolf, but no one, not even Ellie is willing to believe him until both start experiencing changes both physical and in their confidence as the fallout from their ordeal his left them with enhanced abilities. Convinced that he and his sibling are going to wolf-out at any moment, Jimmy does some reading up on lycanthopy while Ellie prepares for the glitzy grand opening of Jake’s wax museum, however, their enhanced strength and vulnerability to silver certainly lends credence to their wolfy fate.
When more bodies turn up mauled by a alarmingly robust animal, the siblings attempt to figure out the identity of the offending werewolf before they too start howling at the moon, but all too soon they start to realise that the beast be be closer to home than they realised.
The list of genre movies that Dimension has almost irrevocably fucked up over the years is certainly an impressive one, with the powers that be being simply unable to stop their reported stubbornness, cheapness and inability to stick to a damn decision from helping bring down entire franchises under their watch. Be it insisting on dismantling, reediting and reshooting Halloween, Hellraiser or The Crow sequels until this lose their spark or simply churning out cheap follow ups just to cling onto franchise rights, the damage they’ve inflicted on the horror genre may actually be greater that the benefits, but none of the fright films in their care has ever been fucked around worse than Cursed.
Essentially hoping to tell a classic werewolf tale that just happens to take place in a modern Hollywood setting, Cursed not only started out with a different story and tone than the one we eventually got it even had a mostly different supporting cast with such actors such as Skeet Urich dropping out entirely due to the vast changes. As a result, what could have been a witty throwback that stuck a cheeky talon into the ribs of classic, old school monster movies became nothing short of an utter mess that takes any original idea it may of had and covers it with a liberal splattering of werewolf shit.
To say that Cursed is ridiculously random is kind of like saying someone afflicted with Lycanthopy is having a bit of a mood swing as the final film is not much more than an odd procession of ideas that refuse to hang together and are neither scary or funny enough to actually hold your attention – think Mike Nicols’ Wolf aimed a jaded teens and you’re pretty much there. One minute the movie is fast-tracking important character details in order to get to the (mostly bloodless) attacks, the next it’s hurling wildly bizarre concepts at you like a werewolf golden retriever (no, really), asking you to accept Michael Rosenbaum’s mind bendingly abysmal hairpiece or cramming shitty cameoes onto the screen such as Shannon Elizabeth, Mya and Scott Biao forcsome reason. Most unforgivable, however, is the choice to jettison effects legend Rick Baker (who is responsible for the werewolf transformation thanks to An American Werewolf In London) in favour of predictably bad CGI and while KNB stepped in to provide a perfectly acceptable, live action werewolf, the movie repays them by having it give someone the finger after Ellie draws it out of hiding by insulting its ass. Thanks guys.
What has obviously happened here is Dimension wanted Scream with werewolves and so Scream with werewolves is what we were going to get, no matter the consequences, but not only to we get Jesse Eisenberg’s ever changing hairstyle to remind us that this movie has been meddled-with, cut and reshot to bits, but none of the disjointed plot or character arcs manage to hold our attention despite Christina Ricci and Eisenberg’s desperate efforts.
Still, even if Craven and Williamson was unable to duplicate their chemistry as seen in Scream and Scream 2, at least they’re professional enough to make this tinkered with tale slick enough to be vaguely watchable – it’s just that this horribly sanitised and deeply uninvolving, full moon romp falls embarrassingly short of their talents.
In the unlikely event that we ever get a Craven cut of Cursed, maybe we’ll get to see what the filmmakers were originally cooking up, but until then, I strongly recommend that you beware this howling misfire as much as someone bearing the mark of the beast avoids the moonlight.
Still… at least the title still fits well enough because Cursed is a perfect description for another one of Dimension’s spayed own goals.
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