Cast: Christina Ricci, Jesse Eisenberg, Portia de Rossi, Joshua Jackson, Judy Greer.
Story: Your usual werewolf nonsense.
Cursed is a by-the-numbers, ordinary werewolf flick from horror pioneer Wes Craven. Whereas some of his previous efforts were fresh (Scream, Nightmare on Elm Street), Cursed is clichéd to the extreme and feels more like an assembly-line job to top up the Craven coffers.
Plotwise we're talking the standard werewolf fare - kids get bitten, obtain new powers, find the master werewolf and bump it off, yadda yadda. There are twists, but they are very clumsily done, as a 16-year old might approach the guessing game of who's-the-baddie. You can almost see subtitles saying, "now you're supposed to think he's the baddie." This sledgehammer approach means that you don't really give a monkey's who turns out to be the baddie, and in the car on the way home you'll have trouble remembering which characters were on which side. Not that you'll spend much time thinking about it, it's more of a brain-off affair anyway.
The first part is actually not bad. As the kids discover their impending transformations there are some good moments and Ricci in particular develops some atmosphere as she struggles to come to terms with the strange happenings. Once we reach the summit and start tumbling towards the conclusion however, the brakes fail and we plunge headlong into the buffers of daftness as events spiral out of control in the most preposterous and unimaginative manner. There's even a hall of mirrors, for feck's sake.
Christina Ricci is a great choice for a werewolf flick and is the only thing to recommend. The other actors are all fine, with nothing to challenge them, except maybe the challenge of not laughing when the floppy dog from Fraggle Rock comes racing round the corner pretending to be a weredog. Yes, the lupine special effects are comical in their muppet-like qualities. If being attacked by a slobbering carpet is scary then Craven has made one terrifying movie. But no, as with all low quality shockers, every single "scary" moment is accompanied by an almighty bang, which is what really makes the viewer jump. I cannot overstate how much I loathe that technique. The director may as well say, "I know this bit isn't scary, so I'm going to shout in your ear instead to make you jump."
Cursed is only going to appeal to those people who watch every horror movie released, or kids who haven't learned how horror should be done yet. There is nothing to recommend it over any other movie, it's not very scary or gory, the plot is a shambles and the wolves look like soft furnishings. If you have nothing better to do then it's marginally better than doing the ironing.
Testosterone Satisfaction Rating: 2/5 Anything with Christina Ricci raises the sap a little, besides that there's some savage bloodletting but it all happens off-screen. Should be a 12A.
To enjoy this film you should: be a die-hard teen horror fan.