Cursed

There was a time in the late seventies and well into the nineties where Wes Craven was considered the King of horror films. Whether this title was deserved is a discussion worth having. He did bring us some iconic horror villains over the years and imbued many of the films he made with a wicked sense of humor. While the original A Nightmare on Elm Street wasn’t as pun heavy as the sequels that spawned from it, it still had a tongue in cheek tone to it that was picked up and amplified as each new installment in the franchise materialized. Films like Vampire in Brooklyn took that comedic element and overused it lessening the scares in favor of a hammy Eddie Murphy performance. Others like The People Under the Stairs and Shocker tried to balance the horror and comedy better but to lesser degrees of success. Scream is held up as the pinnacle of the Wes Craven formula because it takes a satirical look at genre tropes and uses them to make commentary on the slasher genre. Nearly ten years after Scream, Wes Craven sets his eyes on another overused horror genre, the werewolf movie. In 2005, Craven pulls out all the old clichés, all the old tropes, and all the call-backs to werewolf films of the past to cobble together a film that’s as played-through as all the films it hearkens back to. 

Jimmy (Jessie Eisenberg), and Ellie (Christina Ricci) are siblings living together after the loss of their parents. Jimmy, the younger and still in high school, is getting a ride home with Ellie when their vehicle hits a large animal in the road and crashes into another vehicle sending it off the road and down a ravine. While trying to assist the other driver, the large animal they hit initially attacks, killing her and biting both the siblings. This straightforward opening begins what will be just over ninety minutes of jump scares, the occasional werewolf attack, and a mystery over the identity of the original wolf that attacked the brother and sister. 

It’s not a bad setup, actually. The opening scene, where two women go to get their palms read for frivolous reasons only to be told death awaits them both is basically lifted from the Lon Chaney Jr film, The Wolf Man, and this tells you straight up that there are going to be homages throughout the film to the werewolf films of the past. This is double downed later with the deus ex machina cane with the wolves head handle prop from that original movie, a replica donated by the late actor’s family. All of these are winks at the audience letting us know the filmmaker is in on the joke. This type of filmmaking works in the hands of a skillful craftsman but can fall flat with a thud if done poorly. In this case it’s a bit of both.

One of the things that makes The Wolf Man such an enjoyable film is that it takes its time building up suspense and teases the reveal of the wolf. Cursed unfortunately is in too big of a hurry to reveal the monster and when it does appear, barely thirty minutes into the film, it’s disappointing. The werewolf effects are not great and the suspense is deflated too early. An attempt was made to merge practical effects, which was passable, with CGI, which was not. The humor of the screenplay jives poorly with the horror elements here, too. Case-in-point: late into the film the primary villain has been attacking Ellie and Jimmy at a wax museum exhibit. When the werewolf is hiding, preparing to strike, Ellie draws it out by insulting its physical attributes, prompting the werewolf to suddenly appear and flip her off in rage. This stuff just doesn’t work in the body of the film and gives it a schizophrenic feel. Other scenes of the werewolf’s attacks are played straight and are much more effective, yet this comedic moment is dropped into one of the film’s finales? 

The film cannot escape from a certain degree of mean-spiritedness, too. 2005 wasn’t that long ago but some of the mind-sets feel even older and best left in the past. A secondary character, Bo (Milo Ventimiglia), relentlessly bullies Jimmy, calling him gay, taunting him over and over again throughout the film with all sorts of homophobic slurs. Eventually Jimmy, emboldened by his new werewolf abilities, confronts the bully as well as postulating to his face in front of the school that he must be gay, himself, to be fixating on this so much. Then the film gets even more insulting by making this actually be the case. It’s a bad stereotype that feels more like the 80’s or 90’s rather than the mid 2000’s. It’s out-of-touch and, even worse, tone deaf.

Christina Ricci continues to show that she has a specific range that works best for her acting at this time in her career. She is good playing the scared, disturbed aspects of her character. When challenged to play the everyday woman, romantic foil to her boyfriend, Jake (Joshua Jackson), it comes across forced. She would get better at this in later films but it’s very apparent here that she is not comfortable emoting  normalcy. She is showed up by her co-star Jessie Eisenberg who was still in the early days of his career at this point. Jessie has been typecast as the nebbish nerdy character a la Woody Allen and he does that well in the early scenes. However, he also plays the more confident side of things well, something not often seen in his other roles. 

This film either doesn’t try to hide its mystery well or fails to hide it. Either way, the reveal in the final half hour is not a reveal at all. Not only is it predictable but it also telegraphs a red herring in such a way that the second reveal is also predictable. This is unfortunate as it was already lacking any real suspense in the werewolf attack scenes thanks to the bad CGI. Take out any suspense over the identity of the werewolf and you’re left with nothing to really keep you engaged. All that it has left then is some surprisingly effective jump scares. Jump scares are the lowest level of filmmaking for a horror movie. Even with that, though, many films cannot accomplish it, telegraphing the jumps too easily. Wes Craven is better than that, though, and there are several jumps that actually worked. The gore that accompanies any of these scenes is, however, neutered for the sake of obtaining a PG-13 rating. An unrated cut exists with some extra gore and profanity but it only adds two minutes to the film and only serves as a curiosity.

So, is Wes Craven the master of horror or is he just an average filmmaker who manages to hit the bullseye from time to time. I lean towards the latter. A Nightmare on Elm Street is a bonafide classic, as is the original Scream. But for the most part Craven is a schlocky director who makes films that come close to horror classics but miss the mark by just enough to fall by the wayside of forgettability. Films like My Soul to Take, Red Eye, Shocker, and even The Hills Have Eyes are all deeply flawed films that show a director with a vision that can’t quite pull it off consistently. Cursed falls into that category, too. It’s not bad; It has fun with the genre and pays loving homage to the werewolf films of the past. But it misses the mark and by a large enough margin to make it a forgettable film and a lesser one in Wes Craven’s oeuvre. 

Release Date: February 25, 2005

Running Time: 97 Minutes

Rated PG-13

Starring: Christina Ricci, Jessie Eisenberg, Joshua Jackson and Judy Greer

Directed By: Wes Craven