Cursed (2005)★★★★☆

Cursed is a very 2005 Kevin Williamson/Wes Craven production that ends up more Dawson’s Creek than Freddy Krueger. Joshua Jackson and all.

That said, I still really like it. The dialogue is cheesy and hard to swallow (I don’t think Kevin Williamson has ever quite figured out sibling relationships in his writing), but the acting is great. And the cast has a lot of relatively big names – Christina Ricci, a pre-fame Jesse Eisenberg, Judy Greer, Portia de Rossi. Oh, and of course Shannon Elizabeth.

Since this movie is more teen drama than horror, there aren’t too many genuinely scary moments in the film. It relies heavily on jump scares to keep you at the edge of your seat, and there are a lot of jump scares.

Some of the special effects were a bit over the top – like the weird image of the moon in someone’s eyes, and basically all of the transformation sequences – but the story itself was reasonably interesting, and the characters decently sympathetic. Oh, and though I didn’t mention Milo Ventimiglia before, he’s also awesome in this.

And the scene with the dog in the kitchen? That was pretty epic. This is a fun film to watch if you want something horror-adjacent. Or if you just want to watch Christina Ricci in something that’s not terribly depressing.