Last Updated on February 27, 2025 by Angel Melanson
In the realm of horror, there are few names that hit harder than Wes Craven. From gifting us Freddy Kreuger in A Nightmare on Elm Street to reviving the slasher film in the ‘90s with Scream, he was a true master of horror. Yet, even masters miss every so often. That brings us to Cursed, which originally hit theaters 20 years ago on this very day (as of this writing) in 2005. Wes Craven doing a werewolf movie?! What could go wrong? A lot, it turns out.
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Craven took a little break from directing features after the success of Scream 3. Directing three Ghostface adventures in a row can take it out of a person.
“The Cursed experience was so screwed up, Craven said to Ain’t It Cool News in 2009. “That went on for two-and-a-half years of my life for a film that wasn't anything close to what it should have been.”
Craven, at the time, had been prepping Pulse for Miramax, Then, the brass at the studio decided they wanted Craven to make a werewolf movie instead. To get him to abandon the film he was doing, they had to pay up.
“They said, ‘We know you want to do another film, we'll pay you double.’ And we were 10 days from shooting, and I said fine,” Craven added. “I ended up working two-and-a-half years for double my fine, but I could have done two-and-a-half movies, and done movies that were out there making money.”
That’s not usually a good place to start from but so it was. An impressive ensemble was put together led by the legendary Christina Ricci alongside a pre-Zombieland Jesse Eisenberg. Part of the reason Craven agreed to do the film is because Kevin Williamson, who wrote Scream and had become a trusted collaborator, penned the script for Cursed. Again, what could go wrong?
The resulting film centers on siblings Ellie (Ricci) and Jimmy (Eisenberg) who come across a car accident and, as they attempt to help a woman from the wreckage, they are attacked by a mysterious creature. While the woman is killed, Ellie and Jimmy are merely scratched. They soon discover that the creature was a werewolf and that they have fallen victim to a deadly curse. Let the lycanthrope shenanigans ensue.
There was a lot of confidence in the film, at least from the studio side. “Wes and Kevin are a dynamic team, and we are confident that their collaboration will prove to be a winner,” Dimension Films co-chair Bob Weinstein said to Variety in March 2003. Yet, the film was delayed several times en route to release. That’s because there were issues behind the scenes, from reshooting the films several times over to issues with the special effects, it wasn’t going as planned.
Cursed, as we know it, turned out to be a campy attempt to freshen up the werewolf genre. To what degree that was intentional or is effective? That’s not for me to say. The werewolf itself is an unfortunately messy blend of practical effects and CGI. The film was eviscerated by critics in its day and made less than $30 million globally at the box office. To make matters worse, the original budget was supposed to be $35 million but ballooned along the way, with reports as high as $70 million. It was a disaster.
“The crazy part is that after we filmed the whole second version of the film, we had to go back for a third re-shoot which lasted about 20 days,” Eisenberg recalled to Bloody Disgusting in 2019. “That’s like the length of an independent movie. And then we had to go back a fourth time for like 10 days and they made shirts that said Cursed 4: Back for More.”
Fortunately, Craven rebounded just fine. That same year, his now-beloved thriller Red Eye was released, which many still consider to be among his better films. Craven would then reunite with Ghostface and Sidney Prescott for Scream 4 in 2011, which would serve as his final directorial effort before his passing. He was at least able to put that cursed experience on Cursed behind him.
For more, check out some goods from Fango’s archives on Wes Craven and Cursed including…
- Review: CURSED
- Digging Into THE SOUL OF WES CRAVEN
- Ten of Our Favorite Wes Craven Movies To Celebrate His Work
- 12 Lycanthrope Movies With The Best and Most Inventive Werewolves
