Wes Craven’s Cursed

• 3rd Apr 2011

The quickest way to do a poll on popular (or more to the point – unpopular) works by directors is to do retrospectives on their work.  Send out a list of the director’s work and ask people which films they would ideally want to write about.

Your initial response tends to be in favour of the films you love and that affected you in a big way.  Then sometimes people take on the occasional dog – because even some dogs had their appeal when they came out. But then you’re left with two or three titles that no-one wants to touch. No-one. Not even you! So you send out reminders, you make pleas, and you eventually end up on your knees begging someone to write about a title that goes against everything in their soul. And you beg hard because you don’t want to be the sucker that ends up having to do it. Such is the case with the Craven retrospective that we had two absolute beasts of films that no-one wanted to go anywhere near – so as editor you have to wear that responsible hat and proudly walk through that door back to the past where you first came across the film.

In the case of Vampire In Brooklyn it was instant pain. Like leaping into a swimming pool of acid!  You knew straightaway it was a mistake and you wanted out, but in attempting to get out you were going to get more burnt in the process. And would be left scarred for life.

Cursed doesn’t fare any better. This was supposed to do for werewolf films what Scream did for slashers. We had the same director and the same writer– so what could possibly go wrong?  Well it all went a bit 90210 teenage TV drama on us with some of the worst effects known to man – both practical and CGI.

Christina Ricci seemed like a good choice for the lead, and Joshua Jackson as her leading man – sporting manly stubble – also seemed like good for leading man. Now while I think Jackson does have potential as a leading man, the script here is the beast we should all be howling at. It tries to ape Scream in the opening by having a sort of pre-credit kill before we go on to meet our main set of characters. But it’s all been done before. And it’s played far too straight, but without any conviction.

Did I mention the appalling CGI? I think the only fan of this werewolf CGI is the person who went onto design them for the Twilight series. Let’s just say it out loud for the producers in the cheap seats. CGI werewolfs are NEVER a good thing. They never have been. Never seen a good CGI wolf! Go practical people!

This film is also let down by the fact that it’s made for teens, so is teen rated and therefore relies on suspense and not gore for its frights. Again – sadly – the tension amounts to that of the mole hill.

So if you’re interested in La-La-land teens and their younger siblings running around houses finding places to hide from the big bad wolf, then knock yourselves out.  Those of you that get forced to sit down and watch such tripe by other halves with poor taste, or stressed out desperate editors, then grab yourself a bat – and knock yourselves out.

Steven Hurst