Cursed (2005)

Bullied teenager Jimmy (Eisenberg) and his Hollywood executive older sister Ellie (Ricci), are attacked by a werewolf one night when driving home on a curiously empty Mulholland Drive. They both start showing signs of becoming a werewolf themselves and Jimmy can't get anyone to believe him. In a nauseating twist we find out that Ellie's too-busy-for-her boyfriend Jake (Jackson) is indeed the werewolf. This long delayed and Studio tampered with werewolf film from the "Scream" and "Scream 2" duo of Writer Kevin Williamson and Director Wes Craven is an absolute atrocity. It's hard to believe this much talent was involved in this lousy CGI werewolf film that couldn't scare a 13 year old by accident. Williamson's script is full of terrible clichéd characters and unbelievable plot twists that get stupider as it goes. Most attempts at humor fall flat and even horror master Wes Craven's direction seems to be going through the motions. Lead Christina Ricci acts most of the film like she is embarrassed being in it and who can blame her? In all fairness to the film makers, the Studio (Dimension) cut and chopped the movie up to make sure it got a PG-13 rating for the kiddies and both Williamson and Craven are on record saying they were disappointed with what the executives did. With that said, it's still hard to imagine this mess being anything good or even watchable for anyone. Everyone should skip this.

Ouch.Though it doesn't prove to be Wes Craven's worst film (14 years strong, 'The People under the Stairs' still holds that title), it's pretty damn close. I would have stuck with the original working title, "Cursed: Teen Wolf Three."Granted, they did show the beast (something they barely did in the highly superior 'Ginger Snaps') however the 'Van Helsing's wolf-man/teddy bear was far more unique and frightening.Since I apparently can't count past 59, I stopped counting the flaws about half-way through. But then couldn't help myself in the latter part, including the chick that apparently turned into the wolf at the party, shredding her clothes, and then turned back, got new clothes, and then shred those too.Also, when she died (which according to this movie's legend, she couldn't have been killed that way -- but let's skip over that obvious flaw) she was facing upward as the dead werewolf, but in fetal position when they found her nude human form.Don't even get me started on the werewolf giving them the birdie. Ouch. Or the entire motivation for the killer werewolf just bent on getting Joshua Jackson all to herself. On the flip-side.. I really can't blame her; I probably would have done something similar. He was a perk for the movie, but only for eye-candy. At first, of course I was offended by the homophobic lines these assholes were saying, but after the 2nd or 3rd scene, I was waiting for the wrestling captain to come out.Watching this movie, made me want to recommend Ginger Snaps (1, 2 or 3), Wolf, or my personal favorite The Howling, to all my friends.And if they ask me about Cursed, I'll recommend Ginger Snaps (1, 2 or 3), Wolf, or my personal favorite The Howling.

Christina Ricci, Jesse Eisenberg, Joshua Jackson, Milo Ventimiglia, Judy Greer and Shannon Elizabeth star in Wes Craven's 2005 horror film. This takes place in L.A. where we meet young woman, Ellie (Ricci) and her brother, Jimmy (Eisenberg) who are heading home and get into a car accident due to a werewolf. They try to help a young woman, Becky (Elizabeth) whose car they hit and she gets brutally slaughtered by the beast while they're scratched/bit by it. Soon, Ellie and Jimmy start to feel different and learn they have inherited a werewolf curse. Jackson (Urban Legend) plays Ellie's mysterious boyfriend, Jake, Ventimiglia (Rocky Balboa) plays Bo, a bully of Jimmy's who becomes his friend, Greer (Jawbreaker) plays Joanie, a co-worker of Ellie's who dislikes her and Scott Baio (Charles in Charge, Happy Days) also appears as himself. This isn't bad, Ricci is great in it and I recommend it for fans of the genre.

What a delightful little turkey. The typical flick that is so bad, it ends up being good; and one quite entertaining at that. For starters we got Christina Ricci, quite a treat to look at. The blessed girl can't be anything else but cute--she may be a great actress but who cares? --she only needs to stand in front of a camera to make for good fun. Also at her best when on the prowl in that cubicle-filled TV station, moving along in that feline demeanor of hers, sniffing anyone crossing her path, moving her undulating derrière in a lustful, quite inviting, fashion. Yum, yum. And then we have Shannon Elizabeth, the Barbara Steele of Teenage Camp, who we last see, or just her upper part, crawling on the ground, trying to get somewhere but going nowhere but to a hilari...I mean, horrifying death. Campy, campy.The plot is simple. A werewolf roams the wild near Hollywood and one night it attacks those folks involved in a 2--car accident in Mulholland Dr. killing and mutilating the driver of one--Elizabeth--and biting the occupants of the other, Lillian (Ricci) and her nerd brother Jimmy (Eisenberg). Fearing they may turn also in werewolves themselves, these last set then to find the culprit, so they may put an end to the curse that, they think, has so befallen them.The merit of Cursed is that everything in it is uniformly bad, at least mediocre or standard, and that it's also unpretentious. No artsy cinematography trying to cover for the lack of a decent plot, for bad acting or bad writing. No pretense in any of those fields, or others, so you may rest assured knowing that what you get at the beginning is the same you'll get up to the end. The camera work is no great shakes, which allows us to better focus on the bad dialogs, the cheesy SF, the lousy or non-existing characterizations, and having fun watching it all unfold into a cliché ending--note how Bow, Brooke, Zipper appear on cue for the appropriate Hollywood finale. While Ricci & Eisenberg do decent acting jobs, Jackson seems lost here; he has the same perplexed "I just woke up" expression all along, which makes him look like thinking: "I can't believe I'm in this flick, saying these things". Greer may be a good actress--that I can't say--but not for a moment she seems to believe in her character, which makes her greatly overact her scenes. As for Ventimiglia, just two words: bully & gay. Can you imagine that? If you can't, and if you are a GGs fan, just picture Jess rejecting Rory and going instead for Kirk. No wonder he seems to be here only waiting for the director to give him that lift back home and killing the time having some mischievous fun, playing a few Jess-like pranks on others, getting in the way of real actors and characters.But perhaps this is not, after all, a bad serious movie but a good spoof at the genre. What opens that possibility is that we are offered at times some likely caveats warning us that we shouldn't just take it too seriously. The best ex, and the funniest, is the episode of the finger saluting werewolf. See, Lillian & Jimmy have just survived a raging rampage of it, in some horror theme dancing club, and barely escaped an awful death when the beast has let them go at hearing the approaching police sirens. Moments later the arriving cops, unfazed at the news that the beast is actually a werewolf and that it may have yet changed its appearance to that of a particular woman--Lillian's love rival by coincidence--ask for a description. Lillian volunteers; "It's some kind of hyper PR woman, with bony ass, fat tights and baaad skin" At that very moment she--werewolf appears again in the balcony she had disappeared into, still in beastly attire, and indignantly screams at her: "Liar!" only to be riddled with bullets. Well, if you insist in taking the movie seriously after that you better stop asking Mensa for that membership application form they haven't sent you in a year.So, as there could be a fairly decent horror comedy lurking there under the guise of a poorly produced, shot, written and acted flick, I'll give it the benefit of the doubt and I'll say 6.0/10, most of all because it entertained me a lot. If you consider this high...come on, I gave 7.0 to Casablanca and it didn't nearly entertain me that much.