Wes Craven's Cursed is indeed cursed: by a bad script, bad acting, bad special effects, and, most importantly, by the fatal decision by the studio to edit it down to a PG-13 rating. The finished product is messy and disconnected, not scary but not really funny, and nearly completely uninteresting. There's one good laugh in this entire 96 minutes of supposed horror-comedy; needless to say, that one laugh is not worth the price of admission.

The story behind the story is more interesting. There were rewrites, production breaks, re-casting when the original actors' schedules interfered with the reshooting. Omar Epps, Skeet Ulrich, Illeana Douglas, James Brolin, Robert Forster, Scott Foley, and Corey Feldman in the cast; none are in the finished film. Special effects genius Rick Baker was originally in charge of the effects, but he left the project. Craven reportedly said "I'm just sick of the process and want to go out and do something I can feel really good about." Ouch. Originally scheduled to be released in August 2003 (and there's a reference to the 60th anniversary of Univeral's 1943 film The Wolf Man), it sat on the shelf for at least a year before the studio hired an editor to edit it—likely with a potato masher, given the result—into an ill-conceived PG-13 version. Craven and writer Kevin Williamson have more or less distanced themselves from it, refusing to do any publicity, although neither has gone to the lengths of removing his name from the credits.

Christina Ricci, who is better than this kind of material, stars as Ellie, a producer on the Craig Kilborn show. She's seeing the dashingly handsome Joshua Jackson, who is in charge of a Planet Hollywood—like restaurant with a horror-film theme. He's a cad, though, and he pulls the old "I need space" bit on her. Her relentlessly nerdy younger brother Jimmy (Jesse Eisenberg) is relentlessly picked on by Bo (Milo Ventimiglia), the captain of the wrestling team. Ellie and Jimmy are haunted by underdeveloped memories of their apparently recently deceased parents.

The film is full of references to earlier werewolf films, most notably the original 1943 The Wolf Man. Ellie and Jimmy, driving home one dark and rainy night, hit a furry beast; it kills Becky (Shannon Elizabeth) and claws both Ellie and Jimmy. Jimmy quickly becomes convinced that it was a werewolf; his newfound agility and sex appeal, along with some heavy internet research and comic-book reading, convince him. Ellie takes more convincing: only when she nearly takes off a coworker's head after sniffing out her nosebleed does she realize something is up.

It quickly becomes a tired "find out who the original werewolf is" story. Instead of concentrating on Jimmy and Ellie's reactions to their newfound condition, which is the only really interesting thing you can do with a werewolf movie anymore, it's instead a half-assed detective film where the bad guy is so readily apparent that even I guessed it as soon as he walked onscreen—and I'm usually the last person to figure out whodunit. I had a little fun accusing everyone else who walked onscreen—including cameo appearances by such luminaries as Scott Baio, Lance Bass, and Craig Kilborn—but there was no real mystery.

There's also no suspense. Craven doesn't usually depend solely on music blasts to scare you, but that's all that remains as far as scary moments. The momentum-killing editing, "sparing" the audience from the main reasons to see a movie like this, is almost deliberately off-putting. Awful, CGI-enhanced special effects fail to mask the fact that we've devolved to using a dude in a wolf suit—this after the great effects Rick Baker achieved in such films as An American Werewolf in London or The Howling. I can see why he walked away, if the producers (including the chop-happy Weinstein brothers) wouldn't allow him to work his magic. Any gore that was in the R-rated version is excised, leaving gaping holes in the editing.

This was one of the most inept horror films I've seen in quite some time. It even lacked the slick professionalism that most of them have. Mostly, it made me feel bad for Wes Craven, whom I respect. He has made some of the best horror films of the last few decades, and it's sad that this one was such a train wreck, and it doesn't even sound like it's his fault.