Craven’s Creek
Cursed
Starring Christina Ricci, Joshua Jackson and Scott Baio
Directed by Wes Craven
Written by Kevin Williamson
Once upon a time Wes Craven, who incidentally is a very smart man, made savage unflinching films like The Last House on The Left, The Hills Have Eyes and even the first Nightmare on Elm Street. Somewhere along the way, however, he hooked up with boob toob hack Kevin Williamson (the deplorable Dawson’s Creek) and the two of them successfully embalmed the slasher movie subgenre with the smarmy, glib, winking nudging, self referential, utterly hateful Scream franchise. The Craven/Williamson anti horror film Cursed similarly attempts to shave and defang the werewolf subgenre by applying the same sneering principles. Indeed, there are so many contemptuous things to say about this disastrous Teen Wolf/Lost Boys clone that I’m not sure where to begin. I’ll start HERE –
Horror and comedy are the two most subjective genres in cinema and, if not mixed properly, they ultimately deflate each other. John Landis’ immortal An American Werewolf in London and Joe Dante’s intense The Howling are classic horror comedies because the characters are real, the danger they are put is real and any humour is blackly milked from the absurdity of the situation. Cursed blithely ignores the lessons laid down by its predecessors, choosing instead to wallow in an anemic stew of cute girls, buff lads, gay jokes, nasty but silly gore, pitifully outdated social satire (Ricci’s character works as a producer for The Greg Kilborn Show – a program that ain’t even on the air anymore!), and annoying inside jokes – would somebody please explain to me why Scott “Chachi” Baio is in this playing himself? It ain’t clever casting on any level, but much like everything else in the sloppy, pointless Cursed, it thinks it is.
Finally, if you hire Rick Baker – the FX guru who revolutionized prosthetic werewolves in 1981 with London – to design your monsters, why the Hell would you render the pivotal transformation scene with cartoonish, Van Helsing-esque CGI? I hate this movie and I truly hope Craven stops spitting on the genre instead of choosing to make more movies with Meryl Streep. At least Music of the Heart sucked inoffensively.
Chris Alexander