Cursed

After getting into a car accident, orphaned siblings Ellie and Jimmy (played by Christina Ricci and Jesse Eisenberg) get attacked by a large animal. Jimmy swears it was a huge wolf, but everyone tries to convince him that it was probably just a bear or a cougar. By the next morning, the pair start to notice strange changes. Jimmy's getting stronger and Ellie is surprisingly attracted to the scent of blood. Is it a coincidence or have they been cursed with lycanthropy? Wes Craven's Cursed was apparently a nightmare to make, with endless reshoots thanks to the Weinsteins. At least three different versions of the movie were completed. The final version is decent but probably nowhere near the movie that Craven and Kevin Williamson had intended to make. The cast is great, with Ricci and Eisenberg being backed by Joshua Jackson, Judy Greer and Michael Rosenbaum. Plus cameos from Portia de Rossi, Shannon Elizabeth, Nick Offerman, Scott Baio, Craig Kilborn, Lance Bass and the band Bowling for Soup. 

Rating: 62%

(Image from Wikipedia)

Halloween H20: 20 Years Later

For those keeping score, Halloween H20: 20 Years Later takes place, appropriately, 20 years after the events of the original Halloween and Halloween II. H20 ignores the events of Halloween III, 4, 5 and The Curse of Michael Myers. H20 suggests that Michael and Loomis survived the hospital explosion in Halloween II, with Michael going MIA after the explosion and Loomis dying sometime in the years that followed. Laurie Strode, having faked her own death, has assumed the name Keri Tate. With Laurie/Keri now living with her 17 year old son in California, where she is the headmistress of a boarding school. In this continuity, Laurie and Michael are still siblings. H20 begins with Michael tracking Laurie down in California right before everybody leaves the boarding school for a big camping trip. Halloween H20 is kinda slow. It takes almost half the movie's running time for Michael to make it to California. The movie's body count is also pretty low. H20's portrayal of Laurie is pretty interesting though. She's wounded but a lot more proactive than we've seen her in the past. It's almost a precursor to the version of Laurie seen in the David Gordon Green Halloween trilogy. H20 has a pretty impressive cast, along with Jamie Lee Curtis there's Josh Hartnett, Michelle Williams, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Janet Leigh and LL Cool J. There's a Creed song given prominent placement in the film, which seems appropriate for a movie released in 1998. And even though this little pocket of Halloween continuity will be dropped after Halloween: Resurrection, H20 manages to be a decent entry in the series.

 

Rating: 69%

(Image from Wikipedia)

Fun Fact: At one point, Scream 2 is seen playing on a TV in a dorm room.

I Know What You Did Last Summer

After hitting a man with their car, a group of friends reluctantly agree to dispose of the body and cover up the accident. A year later, they begin to receive threatening letters about the incident. Was there a witness to their crime or has one of the friends decided to turn on the others? If Scream is a postmodern take on the slasher formula, then I Know What You Did Last Summer is pure, unadulterated formula. It's a slow burn whodunnit loaded with red herrings, in the tradition of countless early slasher films. It's well made, with plenty of beautiful tracking shots. It's bloody, but not gory. It's also 90s as hell. The opening track is by Type O Negative, for God's sake.

Rating: 65%

(Image from Wikipedia)

Scream 4

Most of the meta chatter in Scream 4 is about remakes. It makes sense, given that horror movies were in a serious remake rut at the time of Scream 4's release. And while the movie keeps telling us that it's a remake, it actually turns out to be a much better concluding chapter for the Scream series than Scream 3 ever was. Every surviving character returns except for Sidney's father, who never really made much of an impact in the series and only ever appeared briefly in parts 1 and 3. The story does a good job of showing us what's happened to these characters in the ten years since their last brush with death. It's a good send-off for the series and I sincerely hope that it's the final chapter.

Rating: 66%

(Image from collider.com)

Scream 2

Scream 2 was released almost one year to the day after the original Scream and it shows. It seems to have been made to capitalize on all of the elements of the original that surprised audiences and critics, while failing to deliver on some of the aspects that made the original so good. The humor is amped up and the cast features even more hip, young television actors. It's also very meta, with the characters recognizing and pontificating on the fact that they're in a sequel. Moreover, it features commentary on the success of the original film with the introduction of the film-within-the-film, Stab, which dramatizes the events of the first film. It fails to deliver a story on par with the original, recycling the framework from the first film without injecting enough original content.

Rating: 65%

(Image from ca.movieposter.com)

Scream

I've mentioned Scream many times on this site. It's a movie that was responsible for reviving the horror genre in the 1990s and launching a wave of imitators. It was the Pulp Fiction of horror movies, if you will. It holds up pretty well today but it has definitely begun to show its age. The hairstyles and fashions in the film stand out now, what with it being almost twenty years old. And you have to remind yourself that almost no one owned a cellphone at the time, because that's literally a plot point in the movie. I particularly enjoyed watching the movie again recently because I forgot just how awesome Sidney Prescott was, she had plenty of 90s sass and humor along with the strength to kick a little ass when confronted with a jerk in a Halloween costume. It was also enjoyable to be reminded of all of the little plot details around the edges of the film. You remember the teens and the rules and the iconic costumes, but you forget that a lot of the movie was about the main character coming to terms with her mother's death and the reality of her mother's sordid past. Also, the motivation of the killers (spoiler alert?) reads like something you'd see on a Men's Rights Activism message board nowadays, so you're happy to see them get killed at the end.

Rating: 85%

(Image from scream.wikia.com)