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The Curse of the Cat People Review

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It looks like I’m finally ready for the sequel to that last film about the Cat People. Don’t mix it up with the Black Cat film that I recently saw though. While this film isn’t as exciting as the Cat People and there is certainly less action/horror, the film makes less slip ups and actually ends up being the better movie. Don’t go in expecting anything other than a slice of life story about a girl and her imaginary friend though. You could be disappointed otherwise.

After getting entangled in affair and letting his wife know that he no longer loved her, Oliver went on to marry Alice. Alice didn’t mind the shady circumstances of this, but grows concerned as Oliver continues to see his old wife in their daughter Amy. Amy claims to have been visited by the dead ex wife several times and Oliver always flies off the handle at this. He can’t seem to get over the past and it’s making things tough for Amy. As Amy drifts off further and further into dream world, Alice needs to figure out a way to make things right. Can she do it?

In case you don’t realize this, I did not like Oliver. For starters, he was a real piece of work in the first film. He went to great lengths to get Irena to forget about the Cat People and to live as a normal person and the ditched her as soon as she had conquered her fears. He even had an affair while he was still married so Irena ultimately murdered someone, but got murdered after that. Despite all of the obvious evidence, Oliver doesn’t believe that Irena could actually turn into a cat and while he can’t get over her himself, he wants Amy to do so. Oliver is rather unfair the whole time and even blames her when the other kids won’t hang out with her. It’s hardly Amy’s fault if the rest of the kids aren’t being nice. He also gives her an ultimatum that she has to lie to his face or get punished. Naturally, Amy makes the right call and tells the truth, but Oliver punishes her anyway. He’s constantly losing his mind over everything and even keeping a picture of Irena after claiming that he would burn them all was rather fishy. It makes sense that Alice wouldn’t react much since she is the one who broke up his last marriage, but it should be a sign to her that Oliver can’t really be trusted.

I don’t like Alice on principle, but she is certainly a lot more reasonable. She is willing to be patient with Amy and never throws things out of proportion. It’s not as if the imaginary friend phase would last all that long anyhow right? Amy’s also a nice enough kid. She does have a problem staying focused as she’ll just forget what she was thinking and go around to play. It’s not her fault if she’s a little scatter brained though and she does consistently try to do the right thing. The circumstances are just always against her. There was really no better ways for Amy to act as she made the right call each time so I was definitely on her side. The family’s butler was rather annoying though and kept adding fuel to the flame. He would let Oliver know that Amy was playing by herself and even when told to escort Amy to a seedy part of town, he couldn’t be bothered since he was cleaning. He gets scared of an old lady and while he is supposed to be the nice character of the film, he just seemed inconsistent. The biggest strike against him was still letting Amy go to the house by herself, that was just inconsiderate.

There was a subplot that felt completely unnecessary to the film, but I suppose it gave us the only element of danger. There was an old lady and her daughter who lived in an abandoned old house in a seedy part of the neighborhood. The old lady believes that her daughter is dead for some reason and is always talking about how her current daughter is an impostor. Unfortunately, the stress of constantly lying to herself every day eventually got to her and she had a fatal heart attack. Her daughter kept trying to convince the Mom that she was real, but it was to no avail. They had the same conversation maybe 4-5 times and afterwards the daughter decided that she’d murder a little kid to get the Mom to notice her. That’s when Amy walks in of course and it gets pretty tense. The camera moves around a bit and we get to see the daughter glare at Amy for a while. Luckily the power of friendship ultimately prevailed and you were left to question once again why the plot was actually there? The tense scenes were handled well I suppose, but the drama with the old lady forgetting her daughter just came out of nowhere. I also didn’t get what the film was going for with her theatrics, maybe it was just proving that she was totally insane? The other unnecessary moment in the film was when a butterfly dies when one of the other kids catches it. This is why I don’t trust kids around animals and while it was meant to show how mean kids can be, it wasn’t needed. As expected, Oliver was on the kid’s side and said that Amy shouldn’t care about butterflies. It goes to show you why he’s not a very good role model and why he is off his rocker the whole time. The guy’s moral priorities are all out of whack.

The main disappointing thing about the film though was that the ghost of Irena wasn’t actually real. That part was underwhelming since I was fully expecting her to be real the whole time. I was anticipating a big fight at the end where she would defeat the Daughter and save Amy instead of just showing up for words of encouragement. She was definitely a good friend for Amy to have and even received a Christmas gift, but the film heavily implies that she really was fake. You could make a case for her being real since Amy even gave her a present and it vanished, but she could have just as easily hid it in the tree. My personal stance is that Irena was made up and Oliver just pretended to see her as part of his agreement to play along with Amy from now on. Better late than never right? It just would have given the film so much more tension and intensity if Irena had really showed up. I was expecting a very different portrayal and appearance from her, but her personality was accurate at least. She never really wanted to hurt anyone and was a very nice character in the first film. It’s good to see that dying didn’t really change any of that.

Overall, The Curse of the Cat People is a very misleading title to what is actually a decent film. There are no curses and there are no Cat People in this film. The movie tries to be intense as Alice says things like “Irena has cursed us!” but there is no real reason for her to feel like that. Oliver hasn’t gotten over her, but that’s because he’s a bad character and it’s certainly no her fault. Maybe it’s just Alice’s guilty conscience reminding her that she indirectly murdered Irena in the last film. In that sense, it’s odd to see her and Oliver get a happy ending since they were basically the villains in the last film. I can’t root for them and it is annoying to see them as the leads, but if you ignore the first film then at least Alice is reasonable enough. Amy was good at any rate and it’s a nice calm film. I don’t really mind slice of life flicks as long as they’re written well and there was nothing wrong with this one. I’d recommend checking it out and the film is fairly short so it’s not as if it’ll drag on or anything. If it ever gets a third film though, I expect to see action of some sort.

Overall 6/10

Cat People Review

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It’s time for an old school horror film. The Cat People is one of those films that makes you shake your head. It was pretty good for about 90% of the film and then drops off the mountain in the closing scenes. It was so close to being a good film, but just couldn’t hang in there. It’s like they say about entering competitions. It’s not about how you start, but how you finish. It may not seem fair, but a bad 10 minutes can completely nullify a good 60 minutes. Negative moments have always had more influence than positive ones because they will just stick in your mind. That’s basically what happens here.

The film follows a lady named Irena who is approached by the flirty Oliver. Clearly this guy isn’t shallow despite going on the offensive immediately so Irena drops what she is doing and the two of them become a couple. The one problem is that Irena comes from the clan of Cat People and she is cursed with the ability to turn into a cat whenever things get past the friend zone. Oliver doesn’t buy this and slowly gets fed up with Irena. He decides to quickly get a new girlfriend before actually breaking up with Irena. He then lets her know about this after she goes through the long ordeal or curing herself. Well…it’s time for revenge!

Irena is actually a pretty good main character. She successfully fights off her impulse to destroy Alice the whole time and also prevents herself from going into the cage where the Black Panther was. She was doing it all to cure herself and become a normal person, but being back stabbed at the last second was the final straw. It was a shame, but now this forced Irena’s hand. The final bit gets rather crazy as she basically destroys herself and then the cat that she freed also dies as it is run over. The ending will just have you shaking your head. What happened to the writers?

Well, the film definitely makes Oliver as unlikable as possible. I wonder if it was intentional though because it doesn’t necessarily feel like it was, but you can’t really tell sometimes. Well, the intent doesn’t matter so much in the end though. You’re rooting for Irena to get him, but this just doesn’t happen. Oliver is too crafty and Irena is too nice for her own good. Alice certainly isn’t any good either. She goes after Oliver the whole time despite knowing that he is taken. She essentially tempts him into making the wrong call. He’s just as guilty as she is, but it doesn’t make either one of them likable in the slightest.

Judd is the psychologist who tries to cure Irena. At first he was a likable enough character. He knew what he was doing and wasn’t handling the situation all that badly. Unfortunately, he decides to go mad with power after that and decided that he wanted Irena all to himself. It doesn’t end well for him, but the whole plot was rather pointless and certainly didn’t need to be included. It’s just another moment where you have to wonder where the film was going with this.

The scenes with Irena as a cat were cool. She did a good job of really putting the fear into Alice and again, I have to give her credit for not finishing the job. Instead, she merely settled for intimidating Alice and subtly hinting what would happen if she didn’t stop playing games with Oliver. Alice ignored this in the end, but Irena still didn’t destroy her. By the end, Irena was certainly willing to, but chose to simply end it all instead of going for revenge. It’s a decision that is incredibly rare for this kind of film.

Unfortunately, we had to have that animal violence towards the end. Having the cat get run over was just pointless and I don’t think that Irena needed to have such a sad ending. Couldn’t the film have just had her go back to her village or just roamed the forest on her own? It would have been more satisfying and not quite as grim. The whole rushed plot with Judd also didn’t do any wonders for the movie. Such a shame, if the film had run its course without any of that nonsense, it could have definitely gotten a 6 or maybe even a 7 depending on what the alternate ending would have been. Still, what ifs and could haves don’t ultimately mean much. Also, another scene of animal violence had a bird die either of shock or Irena’s hands were too much like a cat’s and pricked the bird. Either way, it was another sad moment which really stopped the film’s chances of being good.

While this is sort of a creature feature film, it’s played more seriously than titles like Creature From The Black Lagoon and the old Showa Godzilla films. I think it did try its best to be a horror film. The scene where Irena stalks Alice through the shadows and Irena barely makes it to the Bus Stop is definitely a horror moment. The music cuts away and it gets eerily quiet as she slowly starts to run instead of walk. There’s a lot of tension in the air and the scene was definitely handled well. It was a fun moment and again, I thought that Alice was going to die there. The whole film’s approach would have been different had that occurred as Irena would have likely just taken everyone out. Of course, then it’d just be a generic slasher film and it probably would have been even worse.

Overall, The Cat People is a film that had promise and handled itself pretty well for a while, but then it fell down. It’s still a lot more classy than most other horror titles. Unfortunately, the film simply couldn’t keep it up and Oliver really did his best to put himself in a bad position. The ending really prevents me from recommending this film and you should probably just watch an old Scooby Doo film instead. Those films typically have good endings and you’ll still get your share of scares in the meantime. You won’t have to think about lost possibilities either or wonder why Oliver got to have a happy ending despite being such a mean character the whole time. Also, why did a lady from the lost village show up if she was just going to vanish and never appear again? She was definitely real since everyone saw her. Maybe she traveled all the way to the big city just to mock Irena. I guess I wouldn’t put it past her.

Overall 3/10