Cursed

(2005) **1/2

I said last year that it wasn’t fair to have Shannon Elizabeth in your movie without her taking off her clothes, but I’ll give this movie a pass since they show us Shannon trying to crawl up a hill with everything below her navel ring missing. Ouch!

Cursed was hoping to be the Lost Boys for werewolves. A brother and sister receive strange bites during a car accident/animal attack. They start to develop weird symptoms yadda yadda yadda. This could have been something if they’d tried a little harder, but I could tell it didn’t have the juice as soon as I heard the 9021O.C.-style dialogue. Kevin Williamson has turned out some stuff that I like; why does he just keep imitating himself? These characters are positioned like set pieces. Expecting more character development out of your horror movies is legit when they’re spending this much money.

Even with a garbage script, Christina Ricci is amazing. She’s a good actress and a striking woman (as in looking at her is like being struck), and her presence in a horror movie is a welcome slice of quality. There are some other good features worth mentioning. There’s a satisfying bully-gets-comuppance scene, followed by an original take on the whole bully thing. The werewolves are pretty good, and for once the practical and cg effects look like the same monster. That said, there is one ill-advised loooong cg transformation scene that adds a whole bunch of suck.

The story would have been much better without the “surprise” ending that is so predictable that even characters in the movie see it coming. Also, our heroes never actually develop full-blown werewolf powers themselves, which I thought was a rip-off. See it or don’t.