Cursed
(☆☆)
PG-13, 86 minutes, Southwinds 12
Director Wes Craven and writer Kevin Williamson re-team for a horror film that uses all the rules laid out in their Scream series.
Their new flick, Cursed, begins with a brother and sister inflicted with the curse of the werewolf. The siblings must search out the cause of their infliction, all the while dealing with effects of the curse.
People seem to take Wes Craven too seriously since the success of his recent films - he never made thought provoking horrors in the vein of The Sixth Sense or The Others, and in fact has gotten less serious as his career has progressed. This film proves that. There are a number of cheesy moments, including some bad special effects, a filmy plot and unremarkable performances, although Christina Ricci does a good job. There are, however,
lots of jumps and tense moments, despite the lack of the usual Craven gore element, present in his past films — obviously an effect of the Hollywood system he was never a big part of until now. To my knowledge, he has never made a PG-13 horror film before.
Williamson's writing is typical
of his style, part Scream, part Dawson's Creek, but in Craven's hands doesn't take itself so seriously. There are as many laughs as screams. There are also plenty of nods to past horror films throughout the picture, especially in a particular themed club (where Craven's Freddy Krueger is displayed), and Ricci herself looks strikingly like Morticia Addams (her mother when she played Wednesday Addams in the Addams Family films).
I wouldn't call this a good movie, but a lot of fun in an older style of horror film. This is the film that the characters in the Scram series would have loved.
Michael Boyd
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Cube Zero (★☆1/2)
R. 97 minutes, DVD Rental
The third installment of the Canadian cult films set around the unwilling participants of an experiment inside a giant cube
where each room either leads them toward escape or certain death by various gory means.
The first two films were similar in content and style — people wake up in the cube, move from room to room, gradually dying off, while dealing with conflicting personalities within the group. The claustrophobic atmosphere, paranoia and fights between the characters kept things interesting, but also became old by the end of Cube 2: Hypercube. This film takes a fresh approach, by pulling the audience outside the cube for the first time, and concentrating on the controllers who look upon the unfortunate guinea pigs. Interesting issues arise about authority, power
and even a touch of religion, and while dramatic and frightening, is also humorous at points. For the first time, the gory deaths are not the centerpiece, and admirably the movie doesn't overuse computer special effects. Instead it relies on traditional methods. The filmmaking
is well thought out, and the set designs return to the rustic, simple look of the first film, making this a worthy addition to the series.
The DVD has some surprisingly good extras if you are interested in set design and processes put into the making of a film such as this, with storyboard-to-film comparisons, pre-production set designs and a making-of featurette. You can also re-watch the film with the director's commentary.
This is a nice little DVD that should delight fans of the two prequels.
—Michael Boyd