This is “Scream” werewolf style, with red herrings, a hip cast, endless pop culture references, jump scares and a leading lady who can actually act being forced in to a situation. She even has a spazoid sidekick. Plus there’s that “Scream” style ending with everyone running back and forth and the “Maybe it’s him, maybe it’s her, but no it’s this person!” gimmick. But more characteristically, “Cursed” is a jumbled mess filled with moments that will surely have you repeatedly declaring “That would have been a great sequence”, and I was doing the same thing. Werewolves in the mirror room? Would have been great. Changing in to a werewolf in a public bathroom? Would have been great. Silencing barking neighborhood dogs with a howl? Could have been great. But alas, none of it really is.
One of the many large flaws here to this is that so much goes on here, but nothing ever happens. Characters played by talented actors are introduced and drawn in to the background only to re-appear and then disappear (Shannon Elizabeth has a laughably short role here), and there are sub-plots every which way for nothing to develop. Portia DeRossi is shown for two scenes and disappears, Scott Baio is shown then disappears, Michael Rosenbaum is shown repeatedly and then wasted. The makers are so intent on planting their tongue firmly in cheek, they forget to include anything worth watching. The writer and director insanely flaunts the declaration of “Look how satirical we are!” but the satire is too forced to be deemed clever or subtle.
Jesse Eisenberg is one of the many shunned and underrated stars of “Cursed”. When people like Joshua Jackson were more profiled, Eisenberg just steals the damn show as the dorky young brother of Ellie, Jimmy, and I loved Jimmy’s subplot. Eisenberg is often very funny without being obnoxious and really manages to rise above everyone else. His subplot of a young nerd being turned in to a werewolf and using it to his advantage is derivative of “Spider-Man” but still ends up being damn fun with Eisenberg, and he’s given the best lines (“Good luck to you, yay, yay, go gay!”) and he gets the best sequences as well (trying to wrestle a werewolf? Funny as hell).
He’s a great character in a cloud of crap, and it’s a shame he wasn’t further fleshed out because he’s my favorite character in here, thus because of him “Cursed” gets a pass as a guilty pleasure. The film’s opener is extremely rushed, I mean no sooner than two minutes in to this do we rush in to the wolf attacks and are introduced our hero and heroine, the two core characters who happen to be brother and sister. With much more emphases the two characters could have been the highlight of the movie, but alas, in spite of perfect casting, they’re equally as vapid as everyone else. With the whole horror nonsense, it’s all just too safe. Extremely safe. I can imagine this being screened in high schools, but I guess it was Dimension’s goal thus screwing over audiences.
There are just so many chances for juicy gore that are properly wasted with immense cutaways and Dimension slaps the audience in the face with cutaways so blatant, they’re just annoying, and boy does Craven flaunt jump scares. In one instance of five minutes there are at least four of them, neither of which worked on me. Williamson seeks to create a quasi-“Fright Night” meets “American Werewolf in London” with a dash of “Lost Boys” he forgets the thing called originality. And he derives the plot elements from other much better werewolf films of the past, while following all the safe werewolf film clichés that just harkens on predictability ala personality change, sex appeal, and the old faithful: the victims inevitable lust for raw meat. It’s expected, but it’s just so routine and by the numbers.
You assume a screenwriter who sought out to break free from horror constrictions with “Scream” would be much more daring and attempt to re-write the lore. Yet, he relies on the same formula he did with “Scream”, and creates red herrings on the identity of the wolf who scratched the two main characters, and the red herrings we’re given back and forth are so goofy. As for the werewolves, Craven and the editor are never sure whether they want to keep the look of the wolves a secret, or want to show it all, because sometimes we see just an eye and an arm, and then others we see them in full body, but all the time the werewolf effects are awful. There are bad makeup, bad prosthetics, and terrible CGI and they come off looking like rejected designs from “Van Helsing”. With the story, nothing is ever consistent here.
The two are scratched and have sometimes slow and sometimes rapid metamorphoses as wolves (which ever is more convenient to the story), their hair changes again and again (Jimmy’s hair is sometimes spiky and short, sometimes long and wavy), they can turn in to werewolves when they want, but can’t seem to know how in the climax, it’s stated werewolves can’t touch silver, but we see the villain wielding a silver sword, just make up your damn mind. After all is said and done and we’re played more annoying mind games by the writer, the film just ends without anything worth remembering, and while we’re aware much has happened, we’re inclined to wonder what. If Dimension would have learned to let the artist create instead of interfering we would have had a damn good werewolf movie filled with talent, but thanks to them displaying the ultimate example of what’s the result of studio interference, we’re given this jumbled sum of too many cooks in the kitchen that makes zero sense and wastes so much great talent, it’s criminal.