Jesse Eisenberg: 5 Awesome Performances & 5 That Sucked

2. Jimmy Myers - Cursed (2005)

There’s a very good chance you haven’t heard of Cursed, even though it’s directed by one of the horror genre’s most iconic masterminds, Wes Craven, and stars big-name actors Eisenberg and Christina Ricci as a brother and sister battling against werewolves in LA.

Here’s the reason for that: the film stinks. Largely disowned by its cast and crew after release, Cursed took around five years to be made as it suffered various production issues and ultimately released to universally negative reviews and claims that it was ‘the worst werewolf movie ever made’.

A pre-widespread fame Eisenberg plays Jimmy Myers, who becomes infected by a werewolf bite and accidentally turns his dog into a hellish beast. Try as he might, Eisenberg fails to sell neither the horror nor the comedy of the film. Particularly bad is a scene where he connects dots to draw a pentagram on his palm and rattles off about the interplay between fiction and reality, before convincing his sister to pick up a silver picture frame to check if she is a werewolf.

Flashes of Eisenberg’s future brilliance are present under the surface, but all in all he comes across as a young actor yet to find his own voice, instead submitting to a run-of-the-mill performance.