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You know, I don't think I've seen a single movie dedicated to werewolves that actually does them true justice. They always have some massive issue dangling off of them. Sometimes, the werewolves look like total ass. Sometimes the acting is just terrible. Sometimes the writing is irredeemably bad. Sometimes all of the above! So, coming back to Cursed, what we have here is not a great movie at all. It's got some rather dumb 2000s jumpscare scenes, an annoying high-schooler, and a plot that doesn't make a lot of sense and also has just a bit of cheesiness mixed into it all too. Despite all of that though, it does actually manage to score a lot of points with me regardless because it gets right most of the major things I would expect out a (mostly) non-comedy werewolf movie, and it's even enough to redeem it, at least for me.
The first major thing for me that this movie gets right is that the werewolves are not shoved in as some faction of mindless mooks that never really gets any characterization or fleshing out. Nope, right at the start, our main characters are infected too. They are actively feeling the full effects and we explore those corrupting effects together with the characters as we should. This is a werewolf film, not a wolf film. Werewolves infect people. The infection begins to corrupt them into something more powerful and primal. That is what they do and that is what we should be seeing, not some almost faceless bad guys that act as glorified meat targets for the protagonists.
The second major thing that this movie gets right is that the werewolves don't look like ass. They're actually designed to be cool looking. This seems like a small thing, but it really is important. Remember that the word of the day here is corruption. The form needs to look at least halfway appealing in a primal way. Further, this is an area where, as a filmmaker, you have pretty much full creative license to make the werewolves look as awesome as possible. Don't squander that by making them look like shit on a stick.
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The third major thing this movie gets right is that it has some... Fan service for lack of a better phrase. But not in the traditional sexy sense, although there are still a lot of sexy ladies in this movie. The fan service is instead in the script-writing where the filmmakers wrote in some scenes that just hit RIGHT for a werewolf movie regardless of whether they made a lot of sense or not. Maybe rule of cool would be a better description. I don't wanna spoil these scenes, especially since one of them is damn funny. (And if you spoil any of those scenes in the comments, I'll rip your throat out during a full moon.) I'm sorry, you just gotta have at least a few of these moments of abandon in your werewolf movie or you failed.
Sadly, the movie doesn't end that well at all. It's not the worst ending I've seen, but it definitely needed some rewriting. For what I've read, the ending was actually changed last minute and butchered due to Weinstein's meddling. But regardless... There you go. That's Cursed. It's sad that I have to hold up this movie as an example for other werewolf movies despite all of its problems, but it is what it is. Hollywood, get your shit together, man.
The first major thing for me that this movie gets right is that the werewolves are not shoved in as some faction of mindless mooks that never really gets any characterization or fleshing out. Nope, right at the start, our main characters are infected too. They are actively feeling the full effects and we explore those corrupting effects together with the characters as we should. This is a werewolf film, not a wolf film. Werewolves infect people. The infection begins to corrupt them into something more powerful and primal. That is what they do and that is what we should be seeing, not some almost faceless bad guys that act as glorified meat targets for the protagonists.
The second major thing that this movie gets right is that the werewolves don't look like ass. They're actually designed to be cool looking. This seems like a small thing, but it really is important. Remember that the word of the day here is corruption. The form needs to look at least halfway appealing in a primal way. Further, this is an area where, as a filmmaker, you have pretty much full creative license to make the werewolves look as awesome as possible. Don't squander that by making them look like shit on a stick.
Yes:
No:
The third major thing this movie gets right is that it has some... Fan service for lack of a better phrase. But not in the traditional sexy sense, although there are still a lot of sexy ladies in this movie. The fan service is instead in the script-writing where the filmmakers wrote in some scenes that just hit RIGHT for a werewolf movie regardless of whether they made a lot of sense or not. Maybe rule of cool would be a better description. I don't wanna spoil these scenes, especially since one of them is damn funny. (And if you spoil any of those scenes in the comments, I'll rip your throat out during a full moon.) I'm sorry, you just gotta have at least a few of these moments of abandon in your werewolf movie or you failed.
Sadly, the movie doesn't end that well at all. It's not the worst ending I've seen, but it definitely needed some rewriting. For what I've read, the ending was actually changed last minute and butchered due to Weinstein's meddling. But regardless... There you go. That's Cursed. It's sad that I have to hold up this movie as an example for other werewolf movies despite all of its problems, but it is what it is. Hollywood, get your shit together, man.
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