Movie review: Monstrous (2022)

06 Thursday Oct 2022

Posted by surgeons of horror in Movie review

Tags

chris sivertson, christina ricci, Eagle Entertainment Australia, monstrous, santino bernard, trauma

Christina Ricci will always have a close association with the horror genre, namely for her child role as Wednesday from The Addams Family. Sleepy Hollow, and Cursed. As her roles matured, it would be inevitable that she would take on more maternal roles and this is where Ricci finds herself in her latest feature. Here she takes on troubled mother Laura, who is escaping with her son, Cody (Santino Bernard) from an abusive relationship.

Monstrous is set in 1950s America at a time that comes with all the trappings of a ‘housewife’, so when Laura tries to take up a new life in a lakeside town in California, she has to overcome all the obstacles that a male-dominated world would bring.

To make matters worse, Cody is struggling to fit into this new life and is ostracised from his school peers. Laura does her best to push Cody out of his comfort zone, but with little effect.

What director Chris Sivertson adds to the fold however is a much darker layer, lurking beneath the facade of Laura’s troubled woes. One that she has subconsciously buried to hide the ‘monstrous’ truth. And when some unknown entity starts to make its presence felt from the lake, Laura must find a way to protect her family or lose it all.

The Prognosis:

The trouble with Monstrous is that it falls too easily into predictability with the supposed reveal, all too easy to spot.

The narrative is a little too dry as well and feels flat, especially considering the subject matter.

On a positive note however, Ricci still proves she has the A game and adds plenty of weight to a deeply troubled character.

Saul Muerte

Retrospective: Cursed (2005)

18 Friday Feb 2022

Posted by surgeons of horror in retrospective, wes craven's the scream years

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

christina ricci, jesse eisenberg, joshua jackson, judy greer, Kevin Williamson, lycanthrope, shannon elizabeth, Werewolf, Wes Craven

Wes Craven: The Scream years part 5 – Cursed (2005)

What should have been a dream project for Wes Craven outside of his involvement in the Scream franchise, combining once again with his writing partner Kevin Williamson would end up being something of a nightmare by the time of its theatrical release.

Boosting its potential recipe for success was a high-hitting young talent to draw in the crowds, with Christina Ricci and Jesse Eisenberg playing the siblings and our lead protagonists, ably supported by Joshua Jackson and Judy Greer.

Chief among the downfall of this werewolf flick was a case of the producers muddying the waters of creativity by insisting on making numerous changes to the script and the production, including ditching creature feature effects by the hands of the late great Rick Baker, and implanting computer generated imagery into the fold. I might be biased in this category, as I’m a huge fan of make-up prosthetics and man-made creature effects, but the CGI here is incredibly dated and looks woefully bad looking back 17 years after it had initially hit screens.

The dialogue is incredibly clunky now and it’s evident upon viewing that a lot of changes have been made to the script as it jars in several places, throwing the viewer out of the picture.

There were reshoots upon reshoots upon reshoots, as the powerhouse company kept demanding changes, proving to be one colossal headache for Craven. Supposedly these original cut versions still exist but whether they will see the light of day or be subjected to the darkness remains to be seen.

For now the version we got sees siblings Ellie (Ricci) and Jimmy (Eisenberg) at odds with one another, their relationship stifled growing up together under the cloud of their parents death. Their bond becomes stronger though when they are involved in a car accident when they are attacked by a creature. The creature we learn later is a lycanthrope, and Ellie and Jimmy go about their separate ways to uncover the truth behind the attack with a whodunnit style approach to their amatuer sleuthing before we reach the reveal and the climax of the movie.

Cursed suffers under the weight of mis-managed production but there is still life in the movie, not to be completely dismissed or left for dead. The film contains flickers of a pulse (ironic as the American remake of Pulse was initially going to be a Craven project, before he was pulled into making this movie instead) and there are moments where the Williamson humour is allowed to surface. It would have been so cool to have seen Craven’s initial vision, but unfortunately it would suffer a similar fate to A Vampire in Brooklyn, where the trust in Craven is quashed. Maybe he should have steered clear of the Gothic-style inspirations and kept carving out his own macabre musings, but when the wind forces you in one direction, you have no choice but to bow. A great shame.