es Craven and Kevin Williamson are venerated elder statesmen when it comes to horror movies; Craven's filmography is littered with genre classics from The Hills Have Eyes to Nightmare on Elm Street, and his collaborations with Williamson gave birth to the Scream series, arguably the most popular franchise in modern horror. But when the title of their latest film, Cursed, proved eerily prophetic, the pair found themselves reworking an entire production to create the kind of success they enjoyed previously.
Now scheduled for release in theaters nationwide, Cursed stars Christina Ricci and Jesse Eisenberg as a parentless sister and brother who develop supernatural powers after being attacked by a werewolf. Ricci and Eisenberg recently sat down together with Science Fiction Weekly to discuss their roles in the film and how they changed from one rewrite to the next, and about exploring the complex and multilayered world that Williamson and Craven create as filmmakers.
Is Cursed's werewolf story a metaphor for modern dating?
Christina Ricci: I'm going to let you take that one.
Jesse Eisenberg: I think everything could be construed to be a metaphor for dating.
Ricci: Sex kills. It's really a disease movie. It's about diseases.
What was it like working with Wes Craven?
Ricci: He's great. I mean, he's Wes Craven. He's incredibly experienced, and this is, like, his thing and what he does best, and he's just very laid-back and smart and sarcastic and dry. He doesn't let anything really upset him too much. We're there to make a movie, but it's going to be fun.
Eisenberg: I think also, because he's been doing it so long and has such a command of the genre, that everybody on the set has a great amount of respect for him, and patience. Not that he takes a long time, but there's a general understanding that the outcome is going to be that much better, or there's a confidence that what we were doing was worthwhile.
Are there any of the werewolf's powers that you wished you could keep?
Ricci: I have a horrible sense of smell, so I'd actually like that to be improved a little bit. I'd like to be able to climb up walls. That might be fun.
Eisenberg: Well, in the whole movie, the powers have a dark side to them, so no. But [I like] increased strength, and everybody's attracted to us.
Ricci: That's good, too.
How did the story change, since Wes Craven reshot much of the film?
Ricci: It changed quite a bit. We weren't related in the original version. We just both happened to be involved in this crash, and then when we came back we were brother and sister, and Josh wasn't in the original one. He wasn't. No, and there was no club that anybody was opening.
Eisenberg: No. There was a wax museum. They were able to keep some of the great effects, but the story, I think, is improved. But, I mean, I think the final product is now better, but I think they were able to keep some of the great effects, or some of the more expensive things that still fit into the story.
Do you expect they will release the original version on DVD?
Ricci: I doubt that.
At the time, did you agree with the decision to reshoot the movie?
Ricci: Well, we weren't seeing dailies, and I think it was everyone who was watching the dailies, that they were the ones who could see that it wasn't really working. When you're not seeing what's actually on camera, sometimes it's hard. ... I mean, the final product of any movie usually feels like a totally alien thing than what you've been shooting anyway, so we wouldn't really be able to have that perspective or the objectivity to know that it wasn't really going quite right.
How difficult was it to maintain continuity for your performance when there was a possibility that footage from both versions might be used?
Eisenberg: Very little of it was kept, so there wasn't really a problem.
So none of the original scenes were used for the final film?
Ricci: There were some, and if the case was you've exited the door in a scene that we shot five months ago, and now it's the scene that happens right after you come through the door, then I would watch; he would show us what we were following so we could kind of get back into that.
Christina, what was it like moving from material that was more reality-based and serious to a supernatural story like this one?
Ricci: Well, that's one of the reasons that I took this movie, was that Monster was so heavy and sort of an emotional journey. I mean, Monster was a great experience, because I loved working with Charlize [Theron] and I loved the director, Patty [Jenkins]. But at the same time, when you're working with material that is that dark, eventually you're just going to feel a little bit heavy. So I literally landed in L.A. after filming that, coming back from Orlando, and my agent's like, "OK, you need to go tomorrow to meet on the Wes Craven movie that you can do starting in two weeks if you want to." I was like, "Yeah, that sounds good." Something lighter, like playing a normal person who's running around and screaming. "That sounds good, OK."
When they changed the film to make your characters related, how did that change the way you worked on the film?
Eisenberg: It kind of grounded it emotionally, whereas the first story was about strangers who meet and have to join together and stuff. Which seemed to work, because I read the script and really liked the first one. I think that worked as well, but I guess whoever's decision it was to change it didn't think it worked as well. But having a family as the focus of the movie, and the family suffered a loss. Our parents had been killed prior to the movie, so it certainly grounds it emotionally.
The film is full of strange tonal shifts between comedy and horror. How tough was it to know what part should be comical and what should be taken seriously?
Ricci: I think that was more Wes' decision later on. A lot of that stuff, like the werewolf flipping the bird, that's not something we saw, did we?
Eisenberg: I knew about it.
Ricci: We knew about it, but we didn't see it. He did it digitally later, right? A lot of that stuff, and also the way you edit things, it ends up influencing the tone so much. I think that we just—it's a scary movie, and we went for it. And of course, some things were meant to be funny.
Eisenberg: Yeah, there was an emphasis on comedy.
Ricci: Yeah, and we did them in a comedic way.
Eisenberg: Scream did it the same way. It was able to bridge that gap easily and jump back and forth smoothly. And there's an emphasis on that in this.
How did you approach your roles for this film? Did you do a lot of preparation?
Ricci: Nothing. I was hired literally two weeks before we started shooting. And we did a lot of fittings.
Eisenberg: Yeah, the nature of the movie is not necessarily performance-driven. But that's not to say that it detracts from the quality of the movie. It focuses on other things, and we're doing our jobs and do it as well as we are required to do it. But also, it's a more whimsical movie. It's not as heavy as a movie. It is in the sense that awful things are happening, but in terms of overall tone, it's not taken as seriously.
What are the differences between working on an independent project and a big-budget machine like Cursed?
Eisenberg: I didn't realize the set is quieter in a more emotional scene. I didn't realize there would be a respect for it, because to me it just looks like a horror movie. It seems like they wouldn't take what I was doing as seriously. But I found it to be the opposite, so it was nice.
Were there any collaborations you shared with people that didn't make it to the finished film, or scenes you got right the first time that you were disappointed to lose?
Ricci: Yeah, I mean, originally, when we first were shooting, Skeet Ulrich was in the movie. And by the time they had reworked the script and everything, he didn't like the way his character had been changed. And so he didn't want to be involved anymore. And that was sort of sad. He was a love interest of my character. He was involved in the crash. It was the three of us involved in a crash, and then he and I start—we become attracted to each other. But the way it was rewritten, he just didn't feel like there was enough to make him really want to be in the second version.
Eisenberg: I think the part that he was originally doing was eliminated, essentially. So I think the interest for him, whatever that was at the time, may have not carried over to that new character.
Were there any scenes you thought you nailed the first time?
Eisenberg: No, I mean, I never feel that way, so I was kind of excited to get another shot at it. [But] actually, I think a lot of the stuff that I did in the first version was kind of retained. I think most of the stuff I had done, because it was out of the context of the old story, the stuff on Hollywood Boulevard in the beginning, I think, was there. I think a more significant scene, the fight with the golden retriever, that was also retained, and I know that was important to keep, because it's really exciting and also probably an expensive venture.
Would you be interested in a Cursed sequel, or did the reshoots sour you?
Eisenberg: We start on the sequel next week, so we don't have a choice.
Ricci: These kinds of movies are really fun to make. I think as an actor sometimes you're in the mood to be really serious and do something really hard and thought-provoking. But then the other side of it is "Oh, but I could just have a great time running around doing action-y types of things and being chased by something." Or I could do that in my spare time.
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