WES Craven likes to give teenagers an even harder time than disgruntled Evening Press letter writers.

He has made the teen horror movie the mainstay of his movie career, first with the Nightmare On Elm Street franchise that began in 1984 and went on and on, and then with the irreverent, knowing Scream, which did much the same from 1996. Cursed is unlikely to repeat the trick, however.

Linking up once more with Scream writer Kevin Williamson, Craven sets about reinventing but not alas reinvigorating the werewolf movie. Cursed is more supine than lupine, lacking bite, originality, hunger and state-of-the-art special effects, and it is no surprise to learn that the film's gestation was as troubled as the birth of the Millennium Dome.

The movie hangs on Christina Ricci, and she is dealt a duff hand as bolshie Ellie.

What she needs is dark wit, off-kilter sexiness and swishing turns of her heel, but she looks lumpen at the outset. Her parents are dead, and being focused on her nascent career as a TV chat show producer, she finds her geek brother Jimmy (Jesse Eisenberg) as much of a burden as her weirdo boyfriend (Joshua Jackson, whose beard should have been a giveaway).

Ellie is headed for a fall, and sure enough, her car is struck by a wild animal as she and Jimmy drive along Mulholland Drive (which is always a dangerous address; see Charles Manson's murder spree and David Lynch's movie).

The car collides with another vehicle, whose female driver is dragged off by a wolf-like creature that also inflicts wounds on Ellie and Jimmy.

Suddenly, they have new lupine powers: increased strength, a taste for blood, heightened sex appeal, and at last Craven's botched movie takes on heightened characteristics too with a much needed injection of laughter. Too late, Ricci flourishes rather than flounders but Eisenberg has no personality, and their pursuit of the queen bee of werewolves stumbles on erratically.

The werewolf special effects are lifeless, and when Craven reaches for the old hall-of-mirrors trick, he signs the death warrant for Cursed. Cursed by name, cursed by deed, this werewolf movie is more myth than hit.

Updated: 16:17 Thursday, April 21, 2005