I mention Kirsten Dunst and you probably think... remote fishing village with an ancient curse. Right?

Points for trying to avoid the cruel typecasting fate of Freddy Prinze Jr., but Dunst is pretty far from her element here. As a girl named Silly (Silly!), Dunst takes center stage in a tale told by Lynn Redgrave's aging Celia -- part fiction, part legend. The fishing village where she lives, it is told, has a dark past, caused by an ancient curse that causes the fish to vanish from the local waters once every 50 years. The only way to banish the curse is to sacrifice a girl in the water. And guess who's turn it is to go?

Silly finds a protector in a wealthy visiting boy and has a few misadventures en route to her uncovering of the curse and the fate the locals intend for her. It's like The Wicker Man, only without the music and with a romance subplot. And, sadly, without the sense of dread that Wicker Man builds up, either.

It's hard to get roused by the slow and clumsily directed Deeply, and even Dunst is rather dull here, failing to inspire much sympathy for her character or even a basic level of interest in the plot. Maybe the casting has something to do with this. Dunst's Nova Scotia accent ("We was meant to fish!") sounds more like Georgia. Julia Brendler (who plays the listener to Redgrave's tale about Silly) can't hide her natural German to save her life.

Altogether it's a dull updating of a classic, and it's hard to recommend.