Still trying to get over the deaths of their parents, siblings Jimmy and Ellie have other things to worry about after they are attacked by a werewolf on their way home one night. The things start to get hairy - literally. As the full moon grows closer and the bodies begin to pile up, they learn that to undo the lycanthropic curse they must find and destroy the source.

"Scream" scribe Kevin Williamson must have run out of ideas; that's the only reason I can think of for this incredibly lazy, hugely derivative screenplay. Perhaps it's trying to be post-post-ironic by returning to the format for any number of samey teen horror pics from the 1980s. This is what happens when a retro fad goes mainstream; not only are we plagued by teenagers with mullets and legwarmers, but the same ideas are recycled too. The characters are all cardboard cut-out stereotypes; the uptight girl, the geeky boy, the cheerleader, the bully and the suspicious boyfriend. The real problem is that Williamson makes no attempt to flesh them out - they may as well be glove puppets for all the realistic character traits and motivations they have. The other huge problem is that the curse isn't much of a curse; if anything, being bitten by a werewolf causes incalculable improvements to the victims' lives. I mean enhanced strength, senses and unnatural sexual allure - who wouldn't want that?!? Okay having another werewolf trying to hunt you down and kill you is more of an issue, but as long as you stay in brightly lit, well-populated spaces, it doesn't seem to be much trouble. Where Williamson excels is in providing his characters with pithy (or at least well-observed) one-liners but for some unfathomable reason, there is a dearth of them here, preferring to stick with taunts about characters' sexuality and pointless fawning over Joshua Jackson. There are one or two (like a breathless, almost hysterical speech when one male character makes a pass at another), but it's not enough to carry the whole film.

Jesse Eisenberg makes the best of a bad role as nerdy Jimmy, giving his lines real gusto and occasionally managing to make a comedy silk purse out of a sow's ear. However, he's too muscular to convince as a bookworm and too average-looking to pull off heartthrob status. Jowly Joshua Jackson attempts brooding as bearded boyfriend Jake and entirely fails. I'll never understand where the porker's sex symbol image comes from; he's inexpressive, can't act and even with a beard he looks like a chubby twelve year-old. "Smallville's" Michael Rosenbaum is wasted in a badly underwritten lovelorn sidekick role. You can see him dying to strut his stuff but he's chomped before he can get warmed up. Mya and Shannon Elizabethg exist solely as eye-candy werewolf snacks and do little other than look scared and scream. Milo Ventimiglia has fun as the school bully with a secret that I won't disclose here because it would spoil the only decent laugh in the movie. Judy Greer plays her default jealous bitch as Scott Baio's assistant Joanie. And quite what Mr Baio is doing here I'll never know - I just hope he goes back to televisual obscurity very soon.

The lack of imagination extends to the soundtrack that has "Bowling for Soup" opening the film with a cruddy rock tune called "L'il Red Riding Hood", just in case you hadn't realised it was a werewolf movie. Then there's a veritable smorgasbord of thumping rock and lame rap and an end credits number that incorporates the lyric "woo-ooh" on an alarmingly frequent basis. Even the score isn't original, with Craven referencing himself by using Marco Beltrami's music from "Scream 2" in combination with desperately mediocre high-pitched strings from Tom Hiel and Marcus Trumpp.