Cursed Year: 2005 Director: Wes Craven Written by: Kevin Williamson Threat: Werewolf Weapon of Choice: Silver Based upon: original IMDb page:

Other movies in this series:
None

Rish's Reviews
There aren't enough werewolf movies out there. Maybe they're too expensive, since psycho masks and vampire teeth run cheap. Maybe they're just hard to do right. I had heard such awful things about this film, it was postponed several months, and Miramax dumped it at a bad release time with almost no publicity, so it had to be bad. Still, I felt I owed it to my heroes, Wes Craven and Kevin Williamson, to at least give the movie a shot. And then I read up on the film--that after disastrous test screenings, they reshot a great deal of the picture, then hacked it up to get a PG-13 rating. And again, I passed.
Tonight, though, with nothing productive to do, I went for a drive, and decided to catch the flick at a cheap(ish) second-run theatre. And hey, it wasn't nearly as bad as I'd been led to believe.
It wasn't great. No classic, like Scream or Scream 2 (or even Scream 3, a movie I've grown to hate in recent years). But there are some good moments, and at least one really good one.
And some lame ones too, particularly the ending.
Christina Ricci and Jesse Eisenberg play well-off orphans living in Los Angeles who run afoul of a lycanthrope in the Hollywood hills, becoming infected by the werewolf curse. While juggling the usual issues of the day (work, school, difficult relationships, homophobic bullies who secretly are gay, struggles for acceptance, feeding the dog, front doors that won't stay closed, etc.), they struggle with new questions: Who infected them? Who else is infected? What is in store for them? And can it all be stopped?
The cast was really interesting. I've got two words for you: BAIO. Christina Ricci is fairly good, though still tiny, cherubic, and bug-eyed. Not that I wouldn't make out with her, but . . . Jesse Eisenberg certainly looked the part of the nerdy teen brother, though the fact that I never related to (or sympathised with) his character must mean something negative. Not sure what, though. Joshua Jackson, Portia de Rossi, Michael Rosenbaum, and Judy Greer, all have shown up in better flicks. Is Shannon Elizabeth a Former Celebrity yet? How about Craig Kilborn? Oh, and let's not forget R&B sensation Mya. While not a rapper, I still frowned on her casting, but she was actually pretty good.
The werewolf, created apparently, by Rick Baker and KNB Effects, looks GREAT when it's an anamatronic or puppet, looks pretty good when it's a guy in a suit, and looks lame as hell when it's computer-generated. Look folks, if you can't afford ILM, don't do CGI.
I was entertained to see visual homages to both A Nightmare on Elm Street and Scream, as well as more old time fare like Frankenstein, The Wolf Man, Nosferatu, "Bonanza" (not quite the Horror icon as the other ones), and The Creature From the Black Lagoon. A dance club the size of a city block decked out as a museum of horrors (and Cher) was an awesome setpiece, making me wish a place like that actually existed. Not that I'd get in, mind you. But my sisters could tell me all about it.
This was the first film in forty years (that I can think of) to use the old pentangle/Mark of the Beast on the palms gag . . . probably because it's just stupid. They might as well tried the widow's peak angle. The disbelief in werewolves everybody exhibits is pretty entertaining, as is some of the dialogue, but it didn't have the inspired, polished feel of Craven and Williamson's previous two collaborations. Several moments felt like Scream, and the music by Marco Beltrami evoked it as well, but I kept thinking this was trying to emulate it, unsuccessfully, like several flicks did in the late Nineties.
There were several subplots to sort through, but most of the interesting ones were probably covered in the Ginger Snaps flicks (what are there, eight of those now?). The social statement about gay-bashing was only mildly successful, as was the whodunnit aspect of the script (since there were only three possible werewolf suspects, you could pretty much pick any of them and you'd be right). A couple of the attempts at humor fall incredibly flat, and do so at the detriment of the horror. It felt like a lot of it was a vanity piece for Williamson, who has made so much money for Miramax (don't forget Mrs. Tingle, The Faculty and Halloween: 20 Years Later as well), but I wonder if a lot of the brilliance and zest were in that first draft of the script, and lost when the suits tried to fix it. I understand the need for Wes and Kevin to get back together; I'm sure they had a lot of fun. I wish them better luck with their next projects.
Best Scare: While not necessarily a scare, the best sequence of the film involved a weredog.
I'd Recommend It To: Fans with low expectations.
Note: I just found out that Canada got the the original R-rated version, while America got a watered-down PG-13 cut. Strike two.
Posted: April 5, 2005

Total Skulls: 15

Sequel
Sequel setup
Rips off earlier film
Horror film showing on TV/in theater in movie
Future celebrity appears
Former celebrity appears		Scott Baio
Bad title
Bad premise
Bad acting
Bad dialogue
Bad execution
MTV Editing
OTS
Girl unnecessarily gets naked
Wanton sex
Death associated with sex
Unfulfilled promise of nudity
Characters forget about threat
Secluded location
Power is cut
Phone lines are cut
Someone investigates a strange noise
Someone runs up stairs instead of going out front door
Camera is the killer
Victims cower in front of a window/door
Victim locks self in with killer
Victim running from killer inexplicably falls
Toilet stall scene
Shower/bath scene
Car stalls or won't start
Cat jumps out
Fake scare
Laughable scare
Stupid discovery of corpse
Dream sequence
Hallucination/Vision
No one believes only witness
Crazy, drunk, old man knows the truth
Warning goes unheeded
Music detracts from scene
Death in first five minutes
x years before/later
Flashback sequence
Dark and stormy night
Killer doesn't stay dead
Killer wears a mask
Killer is in closet
Killer is in car with victim
Villain is more sympathetic than heroes
Unscary villain/monster
Beheading
Blood fountain
Blood spatters - camera, wall, etc.
Poor death effect
Excessive gore
No one dies at all
Virgin survives
Geek/Nerd survives
Little kid lamely survives
Dog/Pet miraculously survives
Unresolved subplots
"It was all a dream" ending
Unbelievably happy ending
Unbelievably crappy ending
What the hell?