Watching Christina Ricci perform on celluloid is my guilty pleasure........

Horror legend Wes Craven and writer Kevin Williamson (Scream franchise) bring us this werewolf flick starring the beautiful and talented Christina Ricci (Buffalo 66).

Ellie is a woman who works as a page and assistant for a local talk show. One fateful night, she picks up her bullied younger brother Jimmy and two find themselves in a car accident after avoiding both an animal and slamming into another car. When the siblings attempt to help the other driver, all three are attacked by a monster. Ellie and Jimmy are both slashed by the animal while the other driver is viciously murdered. Soon enough, the siblings realize they are slowly undergoing changes.

The late horror master Wes Craven and writer Kevin Williamson had become a dream team with their hit collaboration franchise Scream. In 2005, the two have collaborated on their entry into the werewolf genre. What's great in the film are not so much the werewolf effects, but it's the slow tense emotions of lead characters Ellie and Jimmy. They are slowly transitioning and show the signs of eventually becoming werewolf siblings.

Lovely Christina Ricci and Jesse Eisenberg are really quite wonderful in their roles of the siblings afflicted by the lycanthropy. In the case of the beautiful and talented Ricci's Ellie, she gets extremely nervous and becomes more fearful while on the other side of the spectrum, Eisenberg's Jimmy used his powers in a Teen Wolf-style of confidence. The play wonderfully off each other.

What makes the film even more interesting is the film allows everyone to play the guessing game of who is the werewolf responsible. "Cursed" has some of the humor you typically find in a Craven film. Cameos/short appearances abound, including Scott Baio and Craig Kilborn playing themselves, as well as Shannon Elizabeth( Night of the Demons) and Portia de Rossi ( Scream 2).

The werewolf scenes are campy. When a wild, evil, snarling werewolf stops to give people the finger, you know this beast is just not wild enough. But there is some awesomeness in the Gore meter if you watch the DVD Unrated version. The original R rated version has been cut in order to receive a PG-13. As the theatrical release stands, chunks of the film appear to be missing. This simply hamstrings the awesomeness of this particular film. The Gore is excellent, visceral and creative. But to see "Cursed" as Wes Craven truly intended. You must buy the DVD Unrated Edition it contains an additional two minutes of gore-fest footage. A Hard (R) is a better fit. Being a desperate werewolf fan, I was just happy to see the big guy back on the big screen. I'm easy to please.

I am a huge Christina Ricci fan I absolutely think she is a tremendous talent and she does not disappoint in this film she is brilliant as usual. Cursed is a must watch for Christina Ricci fans, Wes Craven aficionados & desperate werewolf lovers who can not get enough lycanthrope cinema. This film is a blast. 8/10

The original R rated version has been cut in order to receive a PG-13. A gorier, unrated version was released on DVD featuring scenes with violence more graphic than what was seen in the theatrical PG-13 version of the film. The differences are as follows (includes Spoilers): In the PG-13 version, Shannon Elizabeth's character Becky is simply dragged away by the wolf at the end of the opening sequence. In the unrated version, Becky is torn in half and her bloodied upper-torso is tossed back at Jimmy and Ellie. In the PG-13 version, during Ellie's nightmare, she merely bites Joshua Jackson's character Jake in the neck. The scene then cuts to a quick montage of bizarre images before Ellie wakes up. In the unrated version, after Ellie bites into Jake, she's shown ripping a large chunk of his neck off and then a torrent of blood shoots out of his wound. In the PG-13 version, after Joanie knocks out Jake she starts looking for Ellie and Jimmy. In the unrated version, she first stops by Kyle's body, digs into the large gash in his stomach with her hands, pulls them out and then licks his blood off her fingers before proceeding to look for Ellie and Jimmy. In the unrated version, Joanie (in wolf form) is killed when she is shot in the head and her brains slowly ooze onto the floor. In the PG-13 version, the coroner discovers that Joanie's corpse has changed back into human form when her nude body is shown laying on the floor. In the unrated version, a sheet over her body is pulled back and only her face, complete with a bullet hole in her forehead, is shown. In the PG-13 version, Jake's death by decapitation occurs off-camera. In the unrated version, Ellie is actually shown stabbing him in the neck with the shovel a couple of times before finally cutting his head off. DVD Unrated Edition contains additional two minutes of footage.

After five years without directing a film, I bought this DVD expecting a good return of Wes Craven to the genre horror teen movie. I like his last works in this genre ("Scream 1, 2 & 3") and also the drama "Music of the Heart", and Christina Ricci is very cool. Unfortunately, "Cursed" is a forgettable and predictable collection of clichés. It is amazing how the viewer can predict the next scene! Further, it is amazing how easy is to replace a fancy car in Hollywood: Ellie wrecks her car in the middle of the night, and on the next day she has a brandy new car. Jake breaks the window of the driver of the new car, and on the next sequence we see Ellie driving in a rainy night in high speed without disheveling her hair. Ellie's brother Jimmy unsuccessfully tries to be funny. If you want to see a great werewolf movie, there are many excellent options, but you can forget "Cursed", which is only recommended for killing time. My vote is five.

Title (Brazil): "Amaldiçoado" ("Cursed")

This could've been so good. And hit has good ingredients to make you believe in it. Like the director: Wes Craven of Scream fame (or other horror movies for that matter), good looking people in the lead (men and women, although there are more women I think) and the good comic relief character.

So what doesn't work? Now first of all, you have to watch the unrated version! This is a horror/monster movie, so you can't be watching a PG-13 version of that! Of course that would mean, you have to handle the new scares and the extra blood that comes with that! But the real problem lies within the story. It's too predictable and it has no real character development going on for it. Now you could argue that that's nothing a horror movie necessarily has to have. If you're willing to let yourself go into a fun no-thinking movie, with plot holes, than you'll enjoy this!