When a studio releases a movie with a title like \Cursed,"" they open themselves up for a lot of possible criticism. It would be easy to say ""Cursed"" lives up to its title, and is actually a cursed, horrendous production. However, that statement would be overblown. The only way a title could describe ""Cursed"" is if it were titled ""Somewhat good, somewhat bad movie concerning teenagers turning into werewolves, with a worthless cameo by Scott Baio."" Then again, a title of that length would make the marquee look odd.
Ellie (Christina Ricci) and Jimmy (Jesse Eisenberg) have their lives turned upside-down when a chance car accident turns into a chance werewolf attack which turns them into the beasts as well.
""Cursed"" seems to go for a classic horror approach, in which the characters and plot are largely tangential to the movie and focus gets placed on the thrills of the bad guy.
For a normal horror movie, this would be acceptable; however, this comes from ""Scream"" scribe Kevin Williamson. ""Scream"" worked very well because its characters were characters-people with histories, interesting stories and quirky personalities.
Williamson's characters in ""Cursed"" seem like pale imitations of the great Scream characters. Jimmy could easily be seen as a more hyper Randy Meeks, while Joshua Jackson's Jake is almost a dead ringer for ""Scream's"" Billy.
Every movie in Williamson's portfolio, from ""Scream"" to ""The Faculty"" to ""Teaching Mrs. Tingle,"" exists in a high school setting. Williamson relies on the stereotypical cliques to provide stock characters and motivations, and ""Cursed"" is no exception. However, this setting actually hampers the piece, because all Williamson can say about cliques has already been covered several times over in his previous works. Once again, he rehashes himself.
Where ""Cursed"" truly fails is in the acting. Again, it is a horror movie, and the acting is not expected to be great, but the acting in ""Cursed,"" is noticeably horrible. While Ricci turns in an adequate performance, Eisenberg and Jackson run the spectrum of bad acting.
Eisenberg's performance is miserable because he only has one gear-high-strung. Every statement he makes must be immediately followed by an exclamation point. The problem compounds itself when combined with his actions. He is always moving, always shifting back and forth, losing focus and looking off into the distance for no reason. His character is shy and introverted, and would not act like this. As the main character, Jimmy should be somewhat likable, but Eisenberg makes him into an annoying cartoon.
Eisenberg was bad because he was overacting. This contrasts with Jackson's performance, which was bad for the opposite reason-everything was underdone. He walked through his performance, bringing absolutely nothing to the character-no emotion, no depth and no reason to like him. At no point did his facial expression shift from a frown and at no point could he be liked as a character.
But then again, director Wes Craven has never really been known for pulling the best performances out of his actors. His skill lies in the field of horror, and this talent shines through in ""Cursed."" This might be a paint-by-numbers event for Craven, but his style still comes through.
