Everyone has heard of the proverbial “gray area.” It’s the little space in the twilight of subjectivity where no one seems to agree on exactly what to do with the world’s little genre-benders.

As is the case with “Cursed,” where one struggles with the indecision of whether to laugh at the goofy acting and plot or to pretend he or she is watching a horror movie by acting scared.

Christina Ricci plays Ellie, a nighttime TV non-descript who spends her days avoiding anorexic co-workers and taking care of her socially awkward brother, Jimmy.

After she and her brother are in a freak car accident involving a large animal, the two slowly begin identifying signs that they are becoming werewolves.

It is clear at the start of the film that something has gone terribly wrong.

Doomsday signs include all the following, yet are not limited to: Christina Ricci plays a character who works for the sometime-removed “The Late Late Show with Craig Kilborn”; you can almost see the zipper on the werewolf costume; Shannon Elizabeth is in the movie; the pentagram is used as a symbol of evil — which it is not — Scott Baio is in the movie; and “Dawson’s Creek” pretty boy Joshua Jackson expectedly fails at being even slightly mysterious.

Despite the drawbacks of the movie’s clearly inferior production as a horror film, it surprisingly succeeds as a comedy, intended or not.

Some lines, and a specific scene with a character’s coming to terms with his sexuality, make the film a lovable delight to mock, laugh at and generally have a good time.

Especially entertaining is Ricci’s younger brother Jimmy, played by Jesse Eisenberg, who plays his high school’s misfit so convincingly, you can’t help but feel sympathy for him as he is repeatedly harassed by his peers.

We love Jimmy because we can laugh at him without remorse and then almost as quickly root for him as his werewolf powers enable our small hero to beat the snickers out of his jock-strapped tyrants.

In order to properly enjoy the film, one must overlook the fact that it is a useless money pit dreaded by many production companies, only Craven’s once-shining legacy somehow got this film into theaters a year later than expected.

In a film that we’ll love to hate, however, we have found a fragile nerd that we’d hate to love — but we do.