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— by Robert Mancini
Chances are, at one point or another, Wes Craven has scared the living hell out of you.
The filmmaker's unique visions have put him at the forefront of every major horror movement of the past 30 years. Looking for the stark, ultra-real feel of the '70s? Try "Last House on the Left." Partial to the relentless (and increasingly kitschy) slasher flicks of the '80s? His "Nightmare on Elm Street" set the template. How about the knowing, ironic horror of the '90s? His "Scream" invented it.
Now Craven is at it again with "Cursed," his first turn in the director's chair since putting the "Scream" trilogy to bed five years ago. This time out, the man who gave us Freddy and open flaunting of the horror "rules" breaks new ground (at least for him). It's hard to believe that there might still be a horror stone unturned by Craven, but the young-werewolves-on-the-prowl territory of "Cursed" is fresh for Craven. Truly excellent lycanthrope flicks are rare, but Craven is banking on tapping into "the beast in all of us" to give his latest a comfortable spot in his canon, right next to gems like 1988's "The Serpent and the Rainbow."
"All of us have our individual curses, something that we are uncomfortable with and something that we have to deal with, like me making horror films, perhaps," Craven said of the idea at the core of "Cursed." "A lot of life is dealing with your curse, dealing with the cards you were given that aren't so nice. Does it make you into a monster, or can you temper it in some way, or accept it and go in some other direction?"
For Craven, the creative beast within was silent for years, stifled by a religious upbringing and little in the way of pop stimuli. It took another horror master — a man now considered one of Craven's contemporaries — to awaken the beast and set Craven on his spine-tingling career.
 | | |  | For a quick look at werewolves on film, take a bite out of our feature, "Bad Dog!"
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"George Romero's 'Night of the Living Dead' was the first horror film I saw," Craven recalled. "I came from this really weird background in this very religious family. I grew up in a fundamentalist church that didn't allow movie-going, so I literally didn't have exposure to movies until ... I think I was out of graduate school before I really started seeing a lot of movies."
With little more than Disney to feed on, Craven became an avid reader until diving headlong into film.
"Once I started to see them, it was like I had to catch up," Craven said. "I feel like I've been doing that the rest of my life. I just wasn't aware of horror films. It's ironic because the first time I got to do a film, literally, the thing they said to me was, 'You say you want to be a director someday. We have some guys that want a scary movie. Go write one. If they like it, script it and direct it.' I didn't have a backlog of all the scary movies that had been made, or how to do it, or anything. I just kind of went out and did my own version of what I thought was scary, which I think in some ways made it very different and fresh, because I didn't have any reference whatsoever."
Craven strives to bring that maverick sensibility to each of his films, whether sketching the subhuman sadists of "The Hills Have Eyes," the voodoo practicing, drug abusing anarchists of "Serpent" or the too-clever victims of "Scream." This time out, Craven hopes he can sharpen the fangs of yet another horror subgenre.
"I wanted to see the werewolf and the human ... I wanted to see the human when the werewolf was the werewolf," Craven said of "Cursed." "I asked myself at the beginning, 'What have I never seen in a werewolf movie?' You never glimpse the human that had turned into a werewolf. When you were looking at the werewolf, it was just an animal. I think the fascinating thing is to see a werewolf but you can still see a human in him, you can still see those traits. Judy Greer has a few ticks, and Christina Ricci has a few, so I knew if every one of those characters in my movie were to be a werewolf, I wanted the werewolf to have that same tick and the same way of walking. Suddenly you go, 'Oh my God, that's still him, that's still her.' I think that is what I accomplished."
Will it be enough to inspire a "Scream"-like horror revolution, or will it pass with a "Vampire in Brooklyn"-like whimper? Enlisting the aid of stars Ricci, Shannon Elizabeth and Portia de Rossi likely won't hurt, and the hand of scribe Kevin Williamson ("Scream," "Dawson's Creek") should further guarantee that this wolf has fangs (as well as humor and personality).
"It's scary, but funny and fun," Craven said of his latest offering. "You really care about these people, which is what I set out to do."
Yes, but will there be enough scaring mixed in with the caring? Given Craven's track record, it seems like a solid bet.
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Photo: Dimension/ Getty Images
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