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| Reviewed by: Jason White 01 Jul 2005 Cursed: Unrated
| |  Cursed is an apt name. The film, another collaboration between director Wes Craven and writer Kevin Williamson turned out be one heck of a cursed film. The film went into production, then was shutdown due to effects issues. During that time much was rewritten and changed, with some cast not coming back so even more changes had to be made. I read that a lot of what was used, characters and story elements, were completely cut and never addressed again. To add even more stress, the film got chopped down to a PG-13 so it even again had to be slashed. The actors must have seen it all coming, or what is the final film was like a second film, as everyone in it seems tired and just doing the base amount of work to just get by. Star Christina Ricci is usually pretty good, as are a lot of the supporting actors, but here they are all phoning it in at best. And given Craven as sort of disregarded the film, Williamson too, it is no shock that neither contributed any extras to this release. The DVD though is an unrated job, with about 3 extras minutes of gore. Doesn’t matter though, as the only thing that could save this film would be 3 minutes of Ricci nudity, and even then the film still might not make you want to watch it all.
Cursed is about werewolves. A girl (Ricci) and her brother get into a car wreck and then see the other victim get torn apart by a wolf animal thing before getting attacked a bit themselves. Werewolves is what they will be if they don’t go about finding the lead beast in order to reverse the disease they now are showing symptoms of. Part of the movie is them coming to terms with it at the expense of some friends, before they get their act together and try to reverse the effects.
Cursed is presented in 2.40:1 anamorphic widescreen. Going along with the bad films getting the best DVDs, Cursed looks quite good on DVD. The image is very sharp and defined, with great black level and tons of style to spare. Colors are great with no smearing or aliasing. The compression job is solid with no artifacting beyond the usual bit of edge enhancement. The print is clean and overall this is a great looking DVD transfer.
Audio for the film is Dolby Digital 5.1. As with the video the audio is a rocking good time. A rock soundtrack is in place which is loud and clear. Dialogue is strong and clear thanks to good balance, and surrounds get plenty of action and atmosphere. Very dynamic audio that just seems like a waster given how bad the film is.
Extras are a tad light. We get a short making of featurette, a featurette on the editing, one the effects and a few selected scenes with commentary from select cast and crew. No talk of all the trouble the film went under, nor any added footage of the many reshoots and changes. Too bad, as the film could have used some insight.
Cursed is indeed cursed and you will be too if you watch this with any expectations. Best to go ahead and decide that this will be a drinking film and go about getting a game on with friends when you watch it. Bad, bad stuff that might could have been something at one time. The DVD though is great in terms of audio and video. One would have liked a few extras focusing on the many changes the film went through, but that is not to be I guess.
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Copyright (c) 2007 Rock Star Media Works, Inc. All rights reserved.
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