Main cast: Christina Ricci (Ellie), Jesse Eisenberg (Jimmy), Joshua Jackson (Jake Taylor), Michael Rosenbaum (Kyle), Milo Ventimiglia (Bo), Shannon Elizabeth (Becky Morton), Mya (Jenny Tate), and Portia de Rossi (Zela)
Director: Wes Craven
Cursed is a werewolf movie that is the result of the collaboration between director Wes Craven and writer Kevin Williamson. But this isn’t a groundbreaking movie that rejuvenates a dying genre, though. It’s watchable, but it seems content to recycle werewolf clichés and tropes without turning them around.
Basically, we have two siblings. Ellie works with the studio that produces The Late Late Show with Craig Kilborn. Her boyfriend Jake is debonair and charming, but the thing is, his ex-girlfriends – all of whom he knew before he met Ellie, naturally – keep showing up and damping the mood of the whole romance. Meanwhile Jimmy gets bullied in school by a bunch of guys led by Bo. One night, Ellie and Jimmy are on the road when they get into an accident with another vehicle. They try to rescue the driver, Becky, but she ends up being killed by what seems like a big beast. Both siblings sustain scratches. Guess what happens next. What are they going to do if they want to halt their transformation into werewolves?
Cursed makes a pretty entertaining, if forgettable, werewolf flick, mostly due to the surprisingly good lines present in the script and some decent acting from the lead actors Christina Ricci and Jessie Eisenberg. There is the occasional Teen Wolf quality to the movie that brings on the exuberance and fun. However, this is also the downfall of the movie – it doesn’t seem to know whether it’s a horror movie or a playful flick, and it constantly switches mood from one end to the other. I also like how Ellie is far from the usual dumb horror movie heroine. She’s pretty smart and she has survival instincts.
Meanwhile, Joshua Jackson and Milo Ventimiglia bring on the pretty, if little else. I wonder whether Jake’s character will be more interesting if they have given the role to Michael Rosenbaum instead of the ineffective Joshua Jackson. Oh, the scares are actually far and few in between, due to the many cuts needed to give this movie a PG-13 release during is theatrical run, and the werewolf CGI is actually pretty bad. The werewolf looks more like an overgrown grizzly bear than anything else.
On the whole, Cursed is a decent movie as long as you aren’t expecting a werewolf movie where the blood and gore flows non-stop. This one is more of a mix of teen comedy, angst, and workplace rivalry that just happen to have a werewolf or two thrown into the mix. If you want to rent this one, adjust your expectations accordingly.
