One night script writer Kevin Williamson ate an entire large pizza loaded with anchovies and then went immediately to sleep. He dreamed the cast of Dawson’s Creek was being chased through Casper the Friendly Ghost’s mansion by a Scooby Doo werewolf. The next morning when he awoke, he ought to have resolved never to order extra anchovies; instead, he decided to make a film. Sporting his established resume (rich with fancy horror titles like the Scream movies, Halloween H20, and Dawson’s Creek), he went to visit Wes Craven with his idea. Cursed was conceived.

Anyone who has suffered through anything directed or presented by Wes Craven knows he has a passion for leaving no beast to the imagination. Craven seldom spares his viewers protracted chase scenes, whether the killer is a man in a mask, an evil bug creature (They comes to mind), or a hairy wolfman. Unfortunately for the supposed master of horror, neither computer animation nor Muppet-like costumes are really very chilling in this day and age.

Needless to say, Cursed does not leave you long wondering what the evil werewolf looks like. And what it looks like is a man in a bear suit (FYI, that man’s name is Derek Mears, who also made a guest appearance on Saved by the Bell: The New Class in October 1999). Throughout the movie, you get to see an awful lot of Mears too: mostly, you see ominous shots of his terrifying wolf feet, but you also get a myriad of horrifying close-up shots of his hideous monster face—which seemed oddly familiar to me, because I think my friend Mark wore the same costume for Halloween 1998. While you might expect the monster to be heavily computer animated, Craven actually opted for a more raw (or, less euphemistically: ridiculous) approach and just had the costumed Mears stalk around roaring, tossing hapless victims around like a kid in a tantrum, and once—just before being gunned down by a handful of valiant policemen—flipping the audience the bird.

Sadly, the werewolf is not the scariest thing to cross the screen during the film. Among the more terrifying things are Christina Ricci’s gigantic skull, Joshua Jackson’s five o’ clock shadow, and a heinous scene where Ricci and her “brother” Jesse Eisenberg snack on what appears to be raw bacon. Other things that are sure to make your blood run cold are several zoomed in shots of graphic werewolf comic books (which Eisenberg uses to research his cursed condition), a dreadfully unnecessary scene where Eisenberg uses his new (and slightly ambiguous) werewolf strength to wrestle his high school nemesis, as well as a tense scene in a beautifully generic hall of mirrors which somehow also amplifies people’s voices. The hall of mirrors is actually just a part of a singular club where much of the movie’s action takes place; the club, the theme of which seems to be “creepy movie mannequins and medieval weaponry,” provides a wonderful setting for werewolf battles and confrontations between exceptionally flat characters.