For this week’s installment of Bad Movie Reviews, Margaux and I checked out 2005’s Cursed (available on Netflix Instant, for those of you playing along at home). It was directed by Wes Craven and written by Scream‘s Kevin Williamson, and boasts a cast of Christina Ricci, Jesse Eisenberg, and, um, Mya – how bad could it be?
Trevor: I know we were both disappointed that Stolen wasn’t terrible, but I think Cursed really lived up to the title of this feature. This is a pretty shitty movie.
Margaux: It was more than shitty, it was nearly painful to watch. And it’s even sadder because apparently this was touted as Wes Craven and Kevin Williamson’s re-team for the early 2000s. I don’t know what’s happened to either of them since making the Scream trilogy (which I enjoyed…sorta) but someone touched them in a weird place and they’re clearly working something out.
Trevor: My jaw steadily dropped during the opening credits. What a WTF cast. The first note I took was: “Portia de Rossi palm reads Mya & Shannon Elizabeth,” which sounds like the end result of a Mad Lib where every answer was someone who was briefly popular in the early 2000s.
Margaux: Haha, for me, the biggest WTF celebrity cameo was Nick Offerman as a cop/paramedic. Even he looked like he didn’t wanna be there. It’s okay Nick, you’ll end up doing wonderful, intentionally hilarious things after this!
Trevor: Nick Offerman and Jesse Eisenberg are probably lobbying IMDb as we speak to get this taken off of their filmographies. So, so weird seeing Ron Swanson as a cop in a shitty Craven film. How do you make Scream and A Nightmare on Elm Street and also make Cursed?
Let’s back up a bit. I’m not going to talk about the plot, because it’s stupid. Ah, screw it: werewolves. There you go, readers.
Margaux: Well, I mean, you’re not too far off. Apparently in this world, Christina Ricci and Jesse Eisenberg are siblings named Jimmy and Ellie and one night they hit something…or SOMEONE, out on Mulholland. Which, by the way, was it just me or did that car crash go on for an inordinate amount of time for what looked like two-foot drop?
Trevor: It was decidedly not just you.
I want to talk about two things, so I’m gonna filibuster for a second. First, Ellie goes to visit her boyfriend Jake (Joshua Jackson), who’s designing a horror-movie themed nightclub.
She sees an iron maiden and asks what it is. “Medieval torture device,” he replies. “Could be fun later.” Fucking WHAT? You’re gonna have kinky sex with an iron maiden? The thing that killed Ichabod Crane’s mother in Sleepy Hollow? (Speaking of Sleepy Hollow, the actor playing the werewolf in Cursed, Derek Mears, is currently playing the demon Moloch on the show Sleepy Hollow.)
Margaux: WAIT – that’s what Pacey was working on?! Because I couldn’t really figure it out. It looked like an pretentious “living art installation” that had the theme “scary” attached to it.
Trevor: Second, as soon as the werewolf attacked Becky (Shannon Elizabeth) I wrote “Wolf – Jake?” in my notes, so I can’t tell if I’m super smart or if Cursed is fucking stupid. Oh, uh, spoiler alert, readers.
Margaux: Pretty sure Cursed is just fucking stupid. It reminded me a lot of The Village and that is not a compliment. When Becky gets “attacked,” after Ricci and Eisenberg crash into her/drive her off a cliff, all I saw were lots of leaves being shaken by a sad PA. The movie, on the whole, looked particularly cheap/thrown together too.
Trevor: Haha, you could practically hear them off-camera, losing faith in the Hollywood Dream Machine.
So, Jimmy and Ellie get in the world’s longest car crash (the train derailment in Super 8 seemed shorter), then go home because because they’re more or less unharmed. Jimmy goes straight to his room to log on to the LOLnet, because he’s jumped right to “werewolf” to explain the creature that killed Becky and scratched him and Ellie.
Margaux: Cursed consistently dates itself as a film, and Jimmy logging onto the internet is the perfect example. From his iMac desktop to the Werewolf: Fact or Fiction Geocities site, I would have rather seen Jimmy hit the library and go through microfiche at this rate.
Trevor: Haha or consult some stodgy old professor of lycanthropy.
(Oh, by the way, readers, we are MAYBE twenty minutes into this thing.)
So Jimmy goes to school – after waking up nude in the bushes, which is probably how Jesse Eisenberg sleeps normally – and Ellie goes to her job as a producer on the…hmm, lemme check my notes…CRAIG KILBORN SHOW! HAHAHAHAHA! That’s bizarre celebrity cameo number 1, and believe me it gets worse (numbers 2 and 3 are Scott Baio and Lance Bass). Ellie discovers she likes the smell of blood, but not until after she stalks through the office sniffing everyone. I’m not a superstitious person, but if I saw someone doing that I would say “Oh, that’s probably a werewolf.”
Margaux: Hahaha all of Ellie’s-at-work scenes were so fucking weird, I couldn’t tell if they trying to be foreboding or funny. She’s got a vaguely rapey co-worker and Judy Geer as a bitchy PR person. And I mean, Ellie’s “problem” at work is trying to get SCOTT BAIO onto the CRAIG KILBORN SHOW.
Trevor: Where he’ll go on third after ASHTON KUTCHER and CARROT TOP (who Kilborn just refers to as “The Top”).
Thank you for mentioning her coworker. There was a lot of sexual harassment going on there – like, textbook sexual harassment, which is just one way that Cursed is crazy sexist.
So as for Jimmy’s day, he has to put the neurotic moves on Brooke (Kristina Anapau), while fending off her macho boyfriend Bo (Heroes’’ Milo Ventimiglia), who constantly calls Jimmy gay.
Margaux: I wrote down at one point, “there’s a lot of gay jokes being thrown around for 2005,” so on top of rampant workplace sexual harassment because we come to find out a majority of Ellie’s bosses are werewolves (spoiler), it’s also sorta homophobic.
Trevor: Yeah, there were a lot of issues with Cursed and women. First was the violence towards women, which, sure, it’s a horror film, but the only men (save for the bad guy) who get attacked all turn out to be fine, while the women (save for Ricci) are all brutally killed. Mya, for instance, has a death scene that the size of her role can’t possibly justify. Maybe they wanted to bank on her celebrity or some shit like that, but it seems more likely that Williamson just wanted to see a woman torn apart. It’s weird, and off-putting.
Margaux: Shouldn’t be too surprising, coming from the man who wrote Drew Barrymore getting stabbed in the tits in Scream but I agree with you. And speaking of Williamson, he used to be known for writing whip-smart dialogue but actually wrote the line (that Milo Ventimiglia’s Bo later recites), “a geek on his way to fag-town.” I don’t…understand what happened.
Trevor: Well, let’s talk about Bo. Jimmy calls him out for repressing his own homosexual urges, and later Bo shows up at Jimmy’s doorstep to tell him that he was right and Bo is gay. Weirdly enough, I thought Ventimiglia and Eisenberg had good chemistry together (not in a romantic way), but they became friends way too fast. Still, it puzzled me that Cursed could be so open-minded about homosexuality (Jimmy says “Go gay!”) and be so ass-backwards about women.
Margaux: Two things about Jimmy and Bo’s confession-off. One, I also thought they had good chemistry and was sort of let down that they didn’t end up together in the end. Yes, romantically. Two, Bo’s entire character arc was too fast – he went from a super dick to admitting his obvious homosexual preference. And then Jimmy totally ruins the moment by confessing he’s a werewolf to Bo and Bo…just accepts it as fact. Nothing weird, no questions – just launches into helping him. Fuck Cursed.
Trevor: Haha, I hope they put that on the box art for the BluRay re-release.
And that scene was altogether too fast, and didn’t know if it wanted to be serious (Bo’s confession) or silly (Jimmy’s confession). It tried for both, and succeeded at neither, but at least they got in Bo’s silly ‘98 Camaro to race over to Tinsel to save Ellie.
Here’s what I don’t get: they’re at Tinsel, Ellie knows Jake is the werewolf, and she tells Jimmy and Bo (over the phone) to stay there so she can come get them. Why? They have a car!
Then Ellie shows up and you find out that Jake’s a werewolf, but not the one who attacked Becky and Jenny (Mya). It was Joanie (Greer) all along! And this is where Cursed goes completely off the fucking rails, because Joanie’s ENTIRE motivation for killing Becky, Jenny, and hopefully Ellie is that they’ve all dated Jake in the past, and she wants him all to herself. It’s the whole “If I can’t have you no one can” thing. It strips Joanie of all agency, makes her a laughable villain (which is an even worse crime considering this is the sainted Judy Greer), and pins the entire motivation on Joshua Jackson just being the sexiest hunk of cock LA has to offer.
Margaux: “There’s no such thing as safe sex with a werewolf” – whatever Judy Geer got paid for Cursed should get doubled for having to say that line out loud and with sort of conviction. So if she wasn’t already going to be set up as a laughable villain eventually, that line fucking clenched it.
Trevor: It made me write “Werewolf jizz!” in my notes, so thanks for that, Cursed. Someone’s gonna find my notepad and think I’m the killer from Seven.
Margaux: Dude, how many times did they say, “cursed” “werewolf” and “mark of the beast” throughout this movie? Like, too much. Could be an interesting drinking game.
Trevor: I’m never watching this movie again, that’s all you.
Oh, I forgot to mention this: when Ellie and Joanie are fighting, it takes place in the DIVA ROOM of Tinsel. Real classy, Cursed.
Margaux: Did you notice that when Joanie “turned,” she looked more like giant rat than a werewolf?
Trevor: Haha, no I didn’t. I will say this for Cursed, though: the werewolves look great. That’s the one are they actually gave a shit about, which is why they got Rick Baker to do the effects (he won an Oscar a few years later for The Wolfman).
Okay, so then Jake shows up and somehow Joanie kicks his ass too? Even though he turned her into a werewolf and should logically be stronger?
Margaux: I have no idea, there is no logic in this movie. Ellie gets Joanie to come out when the cops show up to A, spout off this classic, “did you say…werewolf?” And B, get Joanie shot to shit by basically negging her, calling her fat and saying she has no ass. Which, would make her skinny-fat, which she is not. I hate Cursed as much as it clearly hates women.
Trevor: That scene was reprehensible, but I will give it credit for having Joanie leap back into the room, flipping everyone off, as a werewolf, which is the funniest goddamn thing I’ve ever seen.
Margaux: It was on par with Ian Zering surfing a shark in Sharknado…wait, was that scene their inspiration? Nevermind…getting off track. Can we talk about that off-putting closing, sort of 3-way kiss with Jimmy, his love interest (Bo’s GF), and Bo? Because I cannot stop thinking about it.
Oh, readers, Pacey comes back and gets his head severed by a shovel wielding Ellie.
Trevor: Yeah, we can talk about the kiss, but first we need to talk about the way Jake was talking to Ellie. It was super rapey! And the whole thing was underscored by Ellie saying things like “I don’t want this.” Actual line of dialogue, guys.
God, this movie made me uncomfortable sometimes, and not in the good horror movie way, in the bad Cee-Lo “it’s not rape if the woman is unconscious way.” Who the fuck thinks like this?
Margaux: I know right, he’s literally cornering her, begging him to love her and embrace this life. I really needed a hot shower after that scene. And when she rejects him, he’s suddenly totally cool with killing her instead, not a single character in this movie has a logical arc. Even more a horror movie!
Trevor: Let’s not forget that Jake is literally a beast. Which could be an interesting angle – rapists being beasts wearing human skin, but Cursed is so misogynistic that anything approaching depth just falls short.
Okay, yes, the kiss: I actually thought it was kind of funny, especially the way Bo was acting in the background. Don’t get me wrong, though, it was stupid as shit. “I’m gay now, but I’ll tell you where Jimmy lives – and accompany you there – so I can watch you two make out.” WHAT?
Margaux: EXACTLY. It was the most unclear love triangle and the strangest way to give the audience a “happy ending.”
Trevor: I was happy that the movie ended, I’ll tell you that much.
Margaux: Oh God and it was dedicated to somebody! I feel sadder for that dead person. I hope he haunts Craven and Williamson every single day for it.
Trevor: That was Dan Arredondo, assistant director on Scream and Scream 2 and a few other Craven projects. But dedicating Cursed to him is like me dedicating diarrhea to 9/11 first responders.
Margaux: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. I hope THAT makes the BluRay re-release cover!
Trevor: Okay, so let’s talk star count and put this whole shameful chapter behind us. I’m thinking one star. Cursed is shitty, but there were a few good things about it – the werewolf effects looked great, and certain actors (Eisenberg and Ventimiglia, mainly) actually seemed to be trying.
Margaux: I gave it one star on Netflix and I’ll give Cursed one star here. If anything, it’s good for a drinking game that Trevor and I will never play because seeing this movie once is enough. Oh! Hence the star count.
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