By Christopher Kelly--Star-Telegram
February 25, 2005
This is hardly the first horror movie to play the STD-metaphor card, but it may be the bluntest. (Sample dialogue, from a werewolf to his newly "infected" girlfriend, "This is something you can learn to manage.") The only thing missing is a lecture on safe sex--though, considering the eventual fate of a main character, maybe the real message here is abstinence.
The trouble begins when Ellie (Christina Ricci), a producer for The Craig Kilborn Show, and her teen-age brother, Jimmy (Jesse Eisenberg), get into a car wreck and are promptly bitten by a werewolf. (The werewolf was trying to kill the woman in the other car, but that's another long story.) Suddenly, these former mousy siblings are engaged in all sorts of naughty behavior, such as sucking the blood off Craig Kilborn's finger (don't ask) and making a macho high school wrestler (Milo Ventimiglia) turn gay (double don't ask). They even share a few charged glances, though this strenuously PG-13 movie ultimately shies away from the obvious incest angle.
Cursed reteams Craven with screenwriter Kevin Williamson, but it's hardly in the class of their Scream. (Or, for that matter, in the class of such contemporary werewolf classics as An American Werewolf in London or The Company of Wolves.) But save for a few sluggish passages and a few others that degenerate into inane camp (a wax figure of Cher makes a brief appearance), it's also a lot better than it has any right to be.
When Craven sets his mind to it, he can be a peerless crafter of terror sequences--such as a scene here where a werewolf tracks a victim through a garage and onto an elevator. And Williamson, who also created Dawson's Creek, displays genuine affection for his teen-age characters, especially the outcasts and dorks.
As Ellie and Jimmy scramble to find the patient-zero werewolf, the movie seems to unfold in the same adult-free universe as the Halloween and Friday the 13th pictures.
Cursed
Director: Wes Craven
Stars: Christina Ricci, Portia de Rossi
Length: 96 minutes
Rated: PG-13 (violence, sexual content, nudity, strong language, brief drug reference)
GRADE: B-
