Movie Review: Cursed

Runtime: 97 minutes
Rating: R
Release Date: February 25, 2005
Director: Wes Craven

Jenny (Mya) and Becky (Shannon Elizabeth) stop by a fortune teller one night for kicks. The fortune teller looks at Jenny’s hand and sees a dark future, but the two think she’s full of it and walk away.

Cut to Jimmy (Jesse Eisenberg, Camp Hell) driving with his older sister Elle (Christina Ricci, Sleepy Hollow). Elle swerves to avoid an animal in the road and crashes into another car, sending it off the street. When they rush to help the driver, they find Becky inside. She immediately starts complaining, and as they try to pull her out, an animal grabs her. The animals slashes the two leads before disappearing with the woman.

Jimmy naturally decides that he must be a werewolf because he thinks the creature that scratched them was one. Elle thinks he’s crazy, and grabs a silver picture frame to show that nothing is wrong. Even though she denies his claims, she notices weird things happening like smelling fresh blood from across the office. Jimmy has troubles of his own because he can’t get close to his crush due to the school bully Bo (Milo Ventimiglia, Stay Alive).

Elle starts ignoring her brother to focus on her career working on a late night talk show. She also manages to squeeze in some time with her boyfriend Jake (Joshua Jackson, Shutter) even though he seems like an ass and has a little too many past relationships. As the movie continues, the two realize that someone they know might have a connection to the animal that attacked them.

Cursed is one of those films that I can’t quite get a handle on because it does have some moments, but those moments are few and far between. I saw it when it originally came out and thought it was far better than the reviews, but I didn’t like it nearly as much upon further viewing. I actually picked up one of those horror sets because it had two films I liked and I thought I could at least use the rest for the blog. This was one of the films I thought I liked.

Writer Kevin Williamson likes to mix comedy and horror, but he did it a lot better in other films. It almost feels like it tries too hard to be funny. Like, oh, the werewolf gave the cops the finger, hardy-har-har. Or, Becky’s first comment in the middle of a car accident is that she hopes they have insurance.

The werewolf action is several lacking in the film too. When the boyfriend saw the first werewolf, he said, “that is an…interesting take on the werewolf.” We really don’t see the wolf itself until the movie is almost over, and by then, do we really care?