La maldición (Cursed)

After five years without directing a film, I bought this DVD expecting a good return of Wes Craven to the genre horror teen movie. I like his last works in this genre ("Scream 1, 2 & 3") and also the drama "Music of the Heart", and Christina Ricci is very cool. Unfortunately, "Cursed" is a forgettable and predictable collection of clichés. It is amazing how the viewer can predict the next scene! Further, it is amazing how easy is to replace a fancy car in Hollywood: Ellie wrecks her car in the middle of the night, and on the next day she has a brandy new car. Jake breaks the window of the driver of the new car, and on the next sequence we see Ellie driving in a rainy night in high speed without disheveling her hair. Ellie's brother Jimmy unsuccessfully tries to be funny. If you want to see a great werewolf movie, there are many excellent options, but you can forget "Cursed", which is only recommended for killing time. My vote is five.

Title (Brazil): "Amaldiçoado" ("Cursed")

CURSED isn't the greatest werewolf movie ever made, but it's not a complete failure either. Director Wes Craven, like most modern horror-meisters, does his best work with R-rated fare. PG-13 is just too restrictive, not allowing for the gore, language, or nudity that fans have grown accustomed to.

It helps that Christina Ricci, who was so magnificent in the PG-13-rated ADDAMS FAMILY movies of the 1990's, as well as SLEEPY HOLLOW, stars as Ellie. Her facial features alone make her the next Barbara Steel!

The rest of the cast are typical Craven / Williamson: Mostly young, shallow, yet beautiful people.

The story is solid enough, and the pacing is anything but plodding. This is a fairly straightforward werewolf movie with fewer in-jokes and less self-awareness than say, the SCREAM films. As for the special effects, well, the CGI transformations are passable, but made me mourn for the days of Latex.

Recommended mostly for fans of Ms. Ricci, since she's in almost every scene...

Ellie and kid brother Jimmy are driving home late one night through the Hollywood Hills when something huge and monstrous crosses their path. One nasty road accident later, the annoyingly whiny female passenger of the car they just hit is dragged off into the woods by a mostly unseen creature which rips the woman to shreds - and good riddance. Ellie and Jimmy do not escape unscathed themselves. The creature has mildly injured them both and soon, brother and sister are experiencing heightened senses and suffering the Mark of the Beast on the palm of their hands. For Jimmy, it's a blessing in disguise as he returns to high school and battles the school bully. For Ellie, it's the first step on the path towards discovering who the real monster is, and the suspects are numerous. Will she and her brother discover the identity of the beast in time to save themselves from the curse? Or will they too become full fledged werewolves at the next full moon?

"Cursed" doesn't take itself very seriously as a horror film, or as a comedy. It seems to be trying to decide which it wanted to be, and hadn't made up its mind in time for the closing credits. There are a few genuine laughs to be found throughout, and some nifty references to the bygone days of Universal Creature Features, but for the most part this is a silly, airbrushed effort, filled with Beautiful People acting stupidly. I should have considered myself warned when I saw Scott Baio's name in the opening credits. The werewolf itself has a few good scenes, but I was kind of disappointed to see the legendary Rick Baker's name in the credits, and then find myself face to face with a CGI beast later on. And what was Christina Ricci doing in this? Did she lose a bet with Wes Craven or something?

This film might have fared better in the 80s, but it seems somewhat lifeless and unimaginative these days. I'm just glad I had a free pass, otherwise I would be feeling profoundly ripped off right about now.

The very name of this movie seems all too appropriate. For all the reshoots, redesigns, and other creative decisions that were forced, and all the problems that hounded the production, it sounds like a horrid mess long before one ever sits to watch. Its reputation well precedes it, unfortunately, and still there comes a point where one just has to watch for themselves. To sit and do so, I'm not really sure that there was much chance of this coming out especially strong. I don't know what the dividing line is between the original vision and the rehashed material, and I don't know how much it matters. I think there are some terrific ideas here, some real cleverness - a little bit of the comedy earns a good laugh, some of the horror facets are well done - and I'm always up for a new werewolf movie. Yet so much of this film is heavy-handed, over the top, and maybe outright kitschy, such that whatever value 'Cursed' may have to offer, it's counterbalanced by many other qualities that are rather questionable.

The root concept of most notions here are fine. As in many genre flicks, the characters oscillate between struggling with the changes they're undergoing, and reveling in them, and that's a great dynamic to play with. The narrative is fundamentally strong, the dialogue is mostly just fine, and much of the characterizations and scene writing are splendid. Yet some of those rounding facets of the shooting script are nonetheless far less witty or humorous than they're intended to be, just frankly feeling cheap; other little details throughout, meant to help give shape to the end product, just don't come off well. Some choices even of hair or makeup raise a skeptical eyebrow, and select instances of cinematography are needlessly embellished. In execution some moments or decisions of direction are entirely too on the nose (even the opening scene), and others are altogether tiresome. And all this is to say nothing of the CGI. If only seen at a glance, the digital creations are okay. The more they are emphasized in a sequence, however, the more glaring and awful they appear, and this is never more true than when we get a detailed look at a transformation - to be honest, The Asylum has done better work. Even some blood and gore is transparently inauthentic.

Truthfully, this isn't altogether rotten. 'Cursed' is actually better than I thought it was going to be. The cast make an earnest effort, and it quite seems like they're having a good time for the most part. Judy Greer is especially having a blast, and Christina Ricci probably turns in the single best performance of the film. The end product is, to my surprise, modestly enjoyable. It's just so unfortunate that the movie overexerts itself in trying to be slick, cool, fun, and modern, when all it actually had to do was tell a compelling story. The harder it tries, the worse it fails, and it's almost certainly longer than it needed to be. For whatever aspects of horror or comedy are done well, at large these are not nearly sufficient enough to genuinely inculcate broad feelings of thrills or amusement. At length the result to greet us is a somewhat middling affair that constantly rides a line between welcome and boorish, and that occasionally places one foot on either side of that divide. I see what this could have been, but that's just not what we ultimately get. There are definitely worse things one could watch (Wes Craven himself has made some of them), but unless you're a diehard fan of someone involved, the need to check this out is minimal.

I really enjoyed watching this movie in my teen years, it was funny, cheesy and doesn't take itself all that seriously which is the whole point in a horror/comedy. People that gave this movie a bad review obviously went into this expecting so much more, then were sorely disappointed. There were many cheesy horror/comedies during the 2000s, so this movie fits right in with the time, lol.