Cursed (2005)

2005
Directed by Wes Craven
Starring Christina Ricci, Joshua Jackson, Jesse Eisenberg and Judy Greer

Oh, Wes Craven, what happened to you, man?  I really dug Red Eye, his 2005 effort that came a little bit after this flick and seemed to be a good departure into more mainstream thriler fare.  But then came the insanely insipid My Soul to Take.  And don't even get me started on the snake-eating-itself metaphor that was Scream 4.  Even at his BEST, Craven always was maddeningly inconsistent, but the amazing dip that the dude has taken over the past decade really is something to behold.

Which brings me back to Cursed.  It starts a bizarre mix of "just past their peak of fame" actors and up-and-coming stars, but it's the movie's STORY that is truly befuddling.  Scripted by Kevin Williamson, it offers us the usual "Diablo Cody before Diablo Cody" teen dialogue, and it's got more than a few truly out-there plot twists that I admittedly didn't see coming.  But not in the "oh, that's so cool and unexpected" way.  More in a "what the f**k is this?" kind of way.  As refreshing as I found Williamson's style in 1997, I've now come to the realization that this tone is something that instantly turns me off in movies - the way-too-out-there snarkiness and the overly clever-for-the-sake-of-being clever characterizations are like the cinematic equivalent of nails on a chalkboard, and it's an attitude that invades this movie and infects it like the CGI wolves that dot the landscape.  No more stalling.  Time to get to it.

Your star characters for the film are, refreshingly enough, a brother and sister.  Christina Ricci and Jesse Eisenburg star as Ellie and Jimmy, respectively, and all bit of bullshit removed are decent enough in their roles.  Ricci in particular is something of a mystery for me; this lady was RIGHT there around the turn of the century as far as hitting the major major leagues, but she never made it there for whatever reason.  Probably because every pervy director in the country wanted to get her naked and she wouldn't wilt on that until her star had already faded.  But I digress.  Ellie is essentially in charge of Jimmy after the death of their parents, and Jimmy is having all kinds of difficulty with school bullies.  The lead bully is also played by Milo Ventimiglia, who starred in Heroes and got to bang Hayden Panettiere for a while.  Yeah.  And now you know.

Within ten minutes of the opening credits, Ellie and Jimmy are involved in a car accident and are summarily attacked by a huge beast afterwards.  In addition to that, a floozy played by Shannen Elizabeth is killed in this same sequence.  Don't say that this movie doesn't pack on the cameos.  For those keeping score, it also has R&B singer Mya (boner), Portia de Rossi, Lance Bass, Craig Kilborn, and SCOTT BAIO, but enough about that.  Jimmy begins researching the creature that bit them after their horrific car accident, and believes that he and his sister are about to become werewolves.

From here, we get the requisite "character switch" portion of the movie.  The normally reserved and professional Ellie starts dressing moderately slutty at work and exhibiting a lot more confidence with her jock-ass boyfriend Jake (Joshua Jackson, another guy who slipped through the cracks of stardom around this time).  We also get sweet retribution for Jimmy as he gets to beat up on his bullies and impress the girl that he's been pining for.  Now, I like the "nerd revenge" plot device, but I've grown to really hate that "meek guy loves the nice girl who has a douchebag boyfriend" plot device.  It doesn't make characters any more heroic, it just makes them emo, and it's just as annoying here.  While all of this is going on, Ellie and Jimmy become aware of a series of murders taking place across Los Angeles, with Jimmy now fully convinced that the rampage is connected to them in some way.  Spoiler alert: it is.

We don't get much in the way of scares here.  The movie's best sequence belongs to Mya, who gets ripped to pieces by a werewolf in a pretty nifty parking garage chase sequence.  Unfortunately, said sequence falls apart once we get our first full-body glimpse of the wolf.  It looks fantastic in close-up, with the creature effects by Rick Baker taking center stage. And man, if this movie isn't a metaphor for modern-day special effects and why I can't get into almost any mega-budget action movie anymore, because the CGI is just terrible.  Handmade effects, at times, actually do look real.  CGI just looks like cartoon bullshit, and this movie is the proof of that statement.  It takes me right out of the movie almost any time I see it, and it's never been any more apparent than in Cursed. 

Thus, the movie fails pretty handily to scare audiences - both because of its incredibly slow middle section and because of how ridiculous the creature effects look.  It doesn't even have the benefit of jump scares; it's just one unimaginative stalking sequence after another.  Once the actual IDENTITY of the werewolves becomes known, it turns even more ridiculous, with Williamson's script turning in one-liners and sight gags at the worst moments.  That is actually the tragedy of this movie - with a more serious approach, and with this cast, this actually could have been a really nifty werewolf movie with a sibling duo fighting like hell to escape the death warrant that they have inadvertently found themselves under.  As it unfolds, we're left with just another faux clever meta-humor infused joke factory "horror" flick, and I've just seen one too many of those. 

The movie actually does have a saving grace - the aforementioned cast.  Both Ricci and Eisenburg put tons of emotion and heart into their performances, and we actually do care about these characters by the time the final credits tick by.  Some of the cameos are also a treat, with Baio's bit in particular being good for a couple chuckles.  It's a shame that the script doesn't do them any favors.

* 1/2 out of ****.  Sadly not recommended, and it's another MISFIRE in the strange "memorable hit" to "miss" ratio in the career of Wes Craven.