REVIEWED - CURSED: Cursed features Christina Ricci as Ellie, a researcher on The Late Late Show, who is driving home one night with her brother when they are attacked by a werewolf. Anyone anticipating an Irish horror movie will be disappointed to learn that Ellie doesn't work for Pat Kenny and that the monster doesn't leap into action in Dublin but on Mulholland Drive in Los Angeles.

The movie is the fourth collaboration between director Wes Craven and screenwriter Kevin Williamson, who injected a lucrative shot in the arm to the horror genre with the knowing, self-referential Scream and its pair of assembly-line sequels. However, Cursed - aptly titled, given its protracted history of recasting and reshoots - hasn't a glimmer of wit about it. And any screams it elicits will be out of frustration with its cynical and shapeless regurgitation of genre cliches.

The effects work is hopelessly unconvincing in this cheap and cheerless effort. The plotting is so slack that it even includes a jaded "it was all a dream" sequence. The movie references are arch and feeble, unimaginatively borrowing from superior werewolf pictures and ineptly ripping off The Lady from Shanghai for a tacky Maze of Mirrors sequence.

A desperate attempt at prompting pop culture nostalgia involves a prominent cameo from Scott Baio, the Bugsy Malone child star who became a US TV teen favourite in Happy Days and Joanie Loves Chachi.

Ricci deserves much better material than this wretched effort offers, as does Jesse Eisenberg, the young discovery from Roger Dodger who plays her younger brother. So, for that matter, does the paying public.