REVIEW: CURSED

For decades, Wes Craven has been hailed as a 'king of horror'. I've never understood why. Aside from the pseudo-giallo of Last House on the Left and the gore fantasy of Nightmare on Elm Street, his career doesn't have many shocks. It always seemed like he was more interested in character pieces, and that horror was just the easiest way to package the material.

Then there was Scream. I'll hand it to Kevin Williamson; that could have been the best SNL sketch of the '90s. Or maybe the Friends episode I always dreamed of, where Joey finally mangles Ross and Chandler with foozball and hair gel. But no. The same bored target market that reduced irony to a one-liner gave Scream 'cultural icon' status. Ten years later -- a goddamn decade! -- I'm stuck writing about Cursed.

Face it: there's nothing left to draw from a sub-genre that's been the subject of three Wayans Brothers knockoffs. You'd more easily massage Demi Moore's lips into existence. On the eve of the year 2000, the blatantly self-conscious Hollywood horror movie was supposed to die a quiet death along with every computer on the planet and Bill Clinton's political career. And just when I think this horse has actually been beaten into glue, Craven and Williamson knock me down and run a rodeo over my ass.

Cursed leaves behind the typical werewolf setup, instead shamelessly recycling the structure of every other Williamson script. Ellie (Christina Ricci) and Jimmy (Jesse Eisenberg) are siblings who t-bone Shannon Elizabeth on Mulholland Drive (not in a way Maxim would like) thanks to the intervention of a loping lycanthrope. They get scratched, begin to turn into wolves, exude newfound sexuality and enjoy snarky dialogue and some very lame fight scenes before realizing that they're young and beautiful and therefore have nothing to worry about.

(Shouldn't someone at least be bitten before turning Lycanthropenese? These clowns are barely grazed.)

It's not so easy, though. See, Ms. Elizabeth had been warned, along with her friend Mya, that something bad was going to happen 'round about the full moon. Warned by a bloody fortune teller, no less. That's the easy part; we then have to watch Ellie muddle her way through a limp relationship with Jake (Joshua Jackson), a non-committal type busy opening a nightclub. Jimmy has his own issues, since he digs one of the many hot chicks in school (it's L.A., after all) and has to contend with her hormone-throttled wrestler boyfriend.

(Here's a tip for Williamson: when using a fortune teller for exposition, you're in trouble. I don't care if it is Portia de Rossi. The only film -- and I mean the only one -- to ever make it work is Dead Alive, and only because Peter Jackson knows it's a joke.)

Jesus, I'm bored already. This is supposed to be a werewolf movie fer crissake! And maybe, before all the reshoots and the MPAA hack job, it was. But if you go sit in front of Cursed for a miserable 97 minutes, what you'll get is another book of Mad Libs filled in by Craven and Williamson, with special happy fun edits courtesy of the Weinstein boys. Here, look, I copied it all down for you.

Ellie is the classic repressed librarian, except that she inexplicably works as a producer for the Late Late Show with Craig Kilborn. Mark of cultural irrelevance number one. Too bad The Daily Show shoots in NYC, which might as well be Jupiter to Williamson. Jimmy is the quintessential little brother, a dork who's just about to become the hot college indie-rock kid. If you don't believe me, just look at the Nick Cave, Kinski and Distillers posters on his wall.

You'll notice that I haven't mentioned all the great effects, or the cool werewolf killing spree, or anything involving silver. That's because they aren't there. (OK, there's a little bit of silver.) Rick Baker's makeup and werewolf designs, not great to begin with, are wasted on fights that rely on stunt men being thrown from one room to another. Even the jump scares designed for the monobrow set are mostly absent. Instead, we watch Ellie being harassed by a real twat of a publicist (Judy Greer), who represents Scott Biao. Scott fucking Baio! This is what passes for fear from Dimension.

Does the film even act on the Baio-wolf pun? Nope. Nick had to say it instead.

That doesn't stop Cursed from trying to tell me what a horror movie is supposed to be. Anyone will tell you that monsters are just symbology. And if 'anyone' hasn't gotten around to it, Williamson will. There's a five-minute monologue by Judy Greer that loosely ties lycanthropy to STDs, which would work better if Jimmy's subplot hadn't already tied it to both homosexuality and puberty. 90-minute health class, or abstinence ad in disguise? You decide.

(Again in the 'gay' subplot, some obvious missed dialogue: 'Dude, you're looking for a bear. I'm a wolf.')

This movie is utter chaos. Characters and subplots fade away before your very eyes, like Marty McFly is having sex with their mothers. The only one who even tries to hold it together is Jesse Eisenberg. He gets all the best lines, and really appears to care. Eisenberg is also the only person in the film with any sense of timing, making him the only intentionally funny actor. Ricci might have had some heart in the first round, but you can see her wondering, 'Hey, if we shoot this twice, do I get paid twice?' Greer's monologue, which sums up the plot before knocking her off, stops the flick dead in its tracks, and nothing can kick start it again.

And that's irritating because, for about half an hour, they had me. I haven't laughed that much since The Exorcist 2. It's almost all unintentional, but when the entire audience decides that the sheer idiocy of the film is the silver lining, you just have to run with it. But soon, between the lousy CGI werewolves, absurd relationship metaphors and Bic razor editing, I just wanted to be anywhere else. Looking for a silver lining was too optimistic -- Cursed just needs a bullet. No silver required.