Quartile rating: 6/10 · 1 rating
A friendly St. Bernard named "Cujo" contracts rabies and conducts a reign of terror on a small American town.
Cujo is a lean, effective Stephen King adaptation built almost entirely around a single sustained siege sequence — a mother and son trapped in a stalled car by a rabid St. Bernard. The premise is inherently limited but executed with genuine tension. Acting is serviceable, with Dee Wallace delivering a committed, physically demanding performance that elevates the material. Cinematography is competent genre work, making good use of claustrophobic framing inside the car. Novelty gets a modest bump for how effectively and single-mindedly the film commits to its one-location bottle-movie structure — rare for mainstream horror of the era — though the concept itself is simple. The plot outside the car siege is thin domestic melodrama, and the ending, which departs bleakly from convention (and controversially from the novel), lands awkwardly rather than powerfully, undercutting the emotional payoff.