Cursed (2005)

A werewolf picture from 2005, directed by Wes Craven and written by Kevin Williamson, two men who had already spent the late nineties teaching teenagers to scream on cue. Here they turn their attention to Los Angeles, a car accident on Mulholland Drive, and a curse passed along like a bad internship. The studio interfered for two years, fired the makeup legend, replaced practical effects with computer ones, and trimmed the whole affair down to a PG-13. The resulting film is a shambles, though a watchable one, and Craven reportedly disliked it, which lends the enterprise a certain melancholy dignity, like a chef watching his souffle get microwaved by investors.

The film's social conscience is modest and arrives in fragments. Portia de Rossi appears as a fortune teller who may or may not be named Zela on any given day. Mýa turns up in a supporting role, present without commentary, which is its own kind of honesty. The more substantial gesture concerns Bo, a high school bully played by Milo Ventimiglia, who taunts Jimmy with gay jokes before confessing his own orientation and his feelings, a subplot the film handles with a shrug instead of a sermon. Jimmy does deliver a short speech about repression, one lecturing beat in an otherwise chaotic horror comedy, and it lands with a thud. Christina Ricci anchors the proceedings as the resourceful sister who eventually decapitates the villain with a shovel, which is standard final-girl arithmetic, not a manifesto.

Beyond that, the cupboard is bare. No climate anxiety. No body acceptance. No neurodivergent representation. No historical revisionism, this being contemporary fiction with a werewolf in it. A party sponsored by an animal rights group and some Hollywood industry mockery drift through the frame as set dressing, and nothing more. What remains is a studio casualty with a few progressive flourishes bolted on, none of which were the point of the exercise. The point was werewolves. The werewolves, alas, look like software.