While driving through the Hollywood hills late one night, Ellie (Christina Ricci) and her brother Jimmy (Jesse Eisenberg) nearly run over a huge animal running across the road. Ellie loses control of the car and they get into a wreck with fellow motorist Becky (Shannon Elizabeth). When they stop to help Becky get unstuck from her overturned vehicle, they are attacked by a werewolf! Becky is slaughtered right before their eyes but Ellie and Jimmy are merely injured, leaving them totally cursed by the beast. As more victims pile up, the two soon realize that the werewolf they encountered could be someone they know! Can they free themselves of all this lycanthropery before the next full moon?
While not as universally (and unfairly) loathed as My Soul to Take (2010), Wes Craven’s Cursed (2005) is a divisive film among horror fans. It’s lack of an R rating during a time when the genre was plagued with PG-13 fluff didn’t help matters. But even worse, massive studio interference (from the Weinsteins), constant delays, and the inevitable recasting of major roles kept the film in a state of limbo for years. When it finally premiered, Cursed had been stripped of nearly 75% of its original footage and was practically a sequel/remake of itself.
This probably won’t surprise you but I was one of the folks who loved Cursed when it came out. I was completely ignorant of the studio problems- I was never one to follow the trades- and couldn’t understand why it was such a flop. For this viewing, I decided to break with tradition and not watch my beloved Unrated DVD. I hadn’t seen the theatrical version since way back when. Fear not, the superior Unrated cut is also available on the Scream Factory Blu-ray. So yeah, I was rendered nearly toothless (and fangless) for the PG-13 version. Even if you take away the gore of the Unrated version, there’s still fantastic cinematography by Robert McLachlan and a great music score by Marco Beltrami.
Cursed is a glossy affair (thanks in no small part to writer Kevin Williamson) but there are traces of style littered throughout this self-referential Hollywood horror fest. The cast is where this film shines and no, I’m not talking about Craig Kilborn and Scott Baio (who play themselves in the movie). Ricci has always been a favorite and her peculiar acting style never lets me down. Judy Greer, an underrated talent in my humble opinion, is excellent as Joanie, Ricci’s high-strung pain in the ass of a boss. I really like Milo Ventimiglia as the high school jock who bullies the hell out of Eisenberg, but the script gave his character so many homophobic slurs that it’s just completely insane. Yikes.
How many werewolves does it take to screw in a light bulb? Technically, it’s only two but one is a guy in a costume and the other is all CGI. Despite all of his successes as a director leading up to this film, Craven still got caught up in the dreaded reshoot miasma and was forced to nearly start filming his werewolf whodunit from scratch. There’s been rumblings of #releasethecravencut but alas, nothing has surfaced. So yeah, I’m unhappy to report that this Blu-ray of Cursed from Scream Factory does not include the footage that Wes Craven originally shot for this film. If it did, I’d be dancing in the streets. Is that footage out there somewhere on disc? At the time of this writing, that’s a big no. You know what? So what? I bet that all of that scrapped film is probably better left to the imagination.
The Scream Factory Blu-ray leaves nothing to be desired in terms of audio and video quality regardless of which version you’re watching, the PG-13 or the Unrated cut. This is one fantastic release. It looks like all the old extras are intact from the previous release, which is several featurettes and a commentary track on selected scenes with effects wizard Greg Nicotero. New to this release are interviews with editor Patrick Lussier and stunt man/actor Derek Mears (who played the werewolf!).