At least Cursed doesn't take itself too seriously.
After suffering through the dim-witted self-importance of recent horror flicks The Grudge and Boogeyman, the overt campiness of Cursed comes as something of a relief. The film is still far from satisfying as a whole -- especially considering it came from the same creative duo, director Wes Craven and writer Kevin Williamson, that crafted the highly entertaining Scream series.
Craven and Williamson teeter between two schools of horror filmmaking. At some moments, Cursed forays into the kind of self-satire in which the Chucky franchise thrives -- including a self-deprecating cameo by Scott Baio and a handful of lines that have the effect of subverting tension by reminding us that it's all just a big joke. Still, perhaps because of his firm roots in more traditional suspense yarns, Craven never plunges sincerely into the whole camp-horror thing and the result is a film very confused about what it's trying to be. One thing the movie is trying to do is relate to werewolves. It makes this connection in a bizarre car accident early in the film in which Ellie (Christina Ricci) almost makes roadkill out of this villainous creature and, in the process, sends another motorist (Shannon Elizabeth, in a thankless cameo) tumbling off the road. Ellie and her younger brother Jimmy (Jesse Eisenberg) try to assist the shockingly unharmed Shannon, but are interrupted by the reappearance of the werewolf, which gobbles up the American Pie star and leaves gashes on Ellie and Jimmy as well.
Warning: This film might be frightening, if you're 7. Anything big, dark and loud seems scary to a 7-year-old and the werewolf in Cursed is all of those things. It's hard to imagine a college student being frightened by the creature, though, since it looks like a blown-up flash animation.
From the point of attack, Ellie and Jimmy are cursed, it seems -- although the movie is mostly vague on what this means. For one thing, they have pentagrams on their hands, and they also develop a taste for fresh blood and raw meat.
On top of all this, Ellie's having guy problems! Jake (Joshua Jackson), who's opening up an improbable, horror-themed night club, can't commit to Ellie or is upset that she thinks he can't commit to her. Or, he's a werewolf. Whatever the problem is, Ellie grows distant from Jake when all of his ex-girlfriends start turning up mauled to death by an unidentified vicious animal (Hmm ...). Ellie finds no solace at work as her coworkers begin to look increasingly appetizing. She works at The Late Late Show with Craig Kilborn, a touch that I would normally denounce as shameless cross-promotional advertising, except that there is no more Late Late Show with Craig Kilborn. Kilborn stepped down as host last year. Maybe the show's perpetual status with new host Craig Ferguson makes the Kilborn show technically undead and thus relevant to the film? In any case, the Kilborn show serves as an outlet for some of the quirkier elements of the film, such as the aforementioned Baio cameo and some comic situations involving his vixen agent, cleverly named Joanie (Judy Greer).
Less quirky and less original is Jimmy's subplot about his attempts to thwart some homophobic school bullies and impress their pretty girlfriends by showing off his new werewolf-inspired physical prowess. Eisenberg isn't the problem; his performance as Jimmy is inspired in its flailing detachment, kind of a geek-grunge icon for the 21st century. Still, he doesn't have to shoot webs out of his hands for us to see who's being ripped off in these high school scenes. The biggest flaw in the film, however, is that it just isn't scary. At all. And it isn't funny or fresh enough to make it OK that it isn't scary. Williamson does an adequate job, as usual, of presenting us with an array of minor characters/red herrings to keep us guessing who the real werewolf is, and this is fun, I think, to a point. But once the mystery's over, we're faced with the sobering realization that there's really nothing else to the film. It's like listening to a long, macabre joke that ends up lacking a punchline.
