Whenever the name of a classic film director like Wes Craven appears on the box of a horror film, something seems to click in your head that says "this'll be good - remember how good scream was" well, I have to say, this happened to me. I don't know why everyone holds this assumption, because more often than not, Wes Craven's films since scream and blade are ****, people should stop this assumption, you know that advert which says "video piracy destroys jobs and will jeopardise the future of our film industry"? Yeah, well, that warning should apply to Wes Craven's films.

Once more, the usual tired story-line was dredged from the river where it had been immmersed in concrete and respectfully drowned for the future of all the movie-going public. you know - "teens become infected, (Oh god no!) try to find out what or who it is (which is blindingly obvious to the audience) and then finally return triumphant and we end up with a happy little walking into the sunset scene.

I can pinpoint the exact moment when I found out who the werewolf was, even my friend (who isn't the sharpest tool in the box...) worked out as soon as the notion "I just want to crawl into bed for three days" was raised. Which, no joke, about 15 minutes into this boring peice of cinema hell.

The acting was charmless and as blunt as this review - "..."ah...watch out..." the unpopular geek said..." although who can blame them, the sister - Christina Ricci was brilliant in Tim Burton's Sleepy Hollow, but here, curving her body like a cheap pole dancer and sniffing up the sides of men in hallways in search of, dear god...BLOOD! is just agonising to watch. clearly a actress of her previous standard is being hampered by a script written by someone with the penmanship of an 11 year old.

If a film company is going to commission a werewolf movie, the expectation is that the main draw of the film - the werewolf, is well-thought out, and, in these modern times of exceptional CGI, or even well-made suits, gives the right impression, not that the actors are running away from a cardboard cut-out with a few fangs drawn on it. I understand the limitations of budgets, but if you can afford to make an entire nightclub in the film that doesn't look too bad (note the emphasis on "too"...), a big party with tons of people in animal costumes, cars which you can dent, scratch, roll over and destroy all you like, then you should at least make sure your wolf looks good.

This werewolf is horrific, not horrific as it was intended, but as in ****, (i'm on a roll here...) the man-in-a-suit path can work if it doesn't look like an overacting man in a suit. The initial scenes where the werewolf is only partially revealed are not bad, and in places, suspenseful (except that bit when it grabs the woman in the upturned car by the shoulder; you can see it's a puppet since the latex jaws and teeth bend upwards). But as soon as we see a flat brown shape of a "person" in mid transformation with a voice deepening as she says "you bitch!" I wanted to pull my eyes out. When the transformation comes to a close, lo and behold! We don't have a werewolf, oh no, but a fluffy teddy bear, which later goes on to stick its middle finger up at its prey, before going "oh s***!" as it realises it's about to be blown to bits by the gallant police force, my friends and i fell about at this, not because it was funny, but because it was so ridiculous. W mean honestly, Wes Craven, the man who created Scream, should be able to come up with more than a trashy celluloid nightmare, complete with tacky humour and, ooh! a guest appearance by "bowling for soup" - quick everyone! come and see this! this guy knows what we dumb youths like! F*** off.

In short, I would rather saw my own hand off with a blunt knife and use it to attack the shop keeper, in order to reclaim the worst spent £7 of my life.

I my full feeling with the movie is the same like Timberwolf. It need more and it was a little cheese with the fact that the woman werewolf would get so so upset by a few comments, that she would show her self in front of cops with guns. Plus she had to give the finger. What is up with that. Why must the werewolf look dumb.

Write a Review for this movie.

The Wolf Considering the movie is called "Cursed", the whole werewolf thing doesn't seem to much of a curse. In fact, the character's seem better off once they're infected, and you kind of wish they DON'T get cured. At one point, Rick Baker was involved in this project but his work was then scrapped in favour of CG work. That was one of many, many mistakes they made in the course of making this project, which ultimately was probably never going to be all that great anyway. As you can see, the werewolf design is pretty standard and boring, and the special effects aren't that bad. Then there's the sequence with the werewolf dog ... yes, you read that right. A dog bites the teenage boy and becomes infected with lycanthropy. It's an okay idea, but the scene itself ... remember that scene in "The Mask" where the dog puts on the mask and turns into a cartoon character? Well it looks pretty much like that. It has to be one of the more embarassing werewolf moments ever filmed (see third photo up). It's not as embarrassing, however, as the computer generated transformation sequence (see bottom photo), which just shows how it's possible for special effects to have taken several steps backward in the twenty years since Rick Baker won his first oscar. At least it's all done in a single shot, which shows Baker's influence. The computer generated werewolf is somewhere inbetween those in "American Werewolf in Paris", which were awful, and those in "Van Helsing", which were okay. They also made the mistake of letting the werewolf talk. Anyway, I'll try not to go off on a rant here ... there are some pretty cool scenes at the start where Jesse Eisenberg's character is researching werewolves on the internet, and he gets some kind of big book of "Everything You Wanted To Know About Werewolves But Were To Afraid To Ask" (where exactly do they get those books in movies?). It tells him something about werewolves hunting during the lunar cycle, but nothing about them changing at that time. As it turns out, werewolves change in this movie whenever it happens to suit the plot -- it's a point of pure convenience in fact. There's also a scene which utilises that old werewolf/queerwolf metaphor, in a rather silly subplot. There are some good references to "The Wolf Man" here, as there is a club which has a Wolf Man exhibit (see fourth photo down), including a statue of Lon Chaney Jr and a replica of his silver cane. Then there's the silver. Here, silver doesn't kill werewolves but it does hurt them. In order to kill a werewolf you must seperate it's head from it's heart (or just shoot it in the head a lot, with normal bullets). Also, every werewolf has the shape of a pentagram imprinted on it's hand, as in the 80s TV series "Werewolf". This instantly identifies them to the audience when necessary. How "handy". Ahem. Finally, you should know that the werewolves can climb up walls, as in "Underworld".

Overall: