Shot as "Backwater" and test-screened as "The Reaper," this film contains a couple of bracingly mean sequences, but it cleaves so closely to the slasher-movie formula that it can't muster up any suspense at all.

Lynch's fatal flaw is in her handling of the leads. Sands is made to play his single-minded romantic as a spineless, groveling wimp, while Helena is a one-note ice queen for more than half the movie, never reacting realistically to her predicament. The characters are so lacking in dimension and unsympathetic that it's hard to care about them or their story.

Despite the futuristic setting, which relies so heavily on GGI effects that it looks like a feature-length production concept painting, this film is painfully predictable.

Though the film springs an okay twist at the very end, there's a good chance you won't be awake to see it.

Though handsomely mounted, this parable of intersecting destinies and implacable tragedy is as lifeless as a wax tableau.

For the most part, anything resembling a genuine plot is pushed back to give a showcase for Shore, a scenery chewer without conviction or noticeable talent, whose deficits as an actor and comedian have evidently remained safely hidden in the zap-happy MTV format until now.

It waffles constantly, and we never know if the creators are for or against gambling.

Call it Death Wish Goes Suburban.

Ritchie wraps this folderol in cinematic razzle-dazzle, including animated sequences, reverse motion, trompe l'oeil production design and tricky lighting. But it's still claptrap.

After an onslaught of prerelease hype promising the erotic experience of a lifetime, Showgirls reveals itself as a 131-minute dose of cinematic saltpeter.

There's so much going on it's hard to keep track, and after a while you may be tempted to give up.

DeMeo is not without talent; he just needs better material.

There's some fun to be had in seeing two of TV's resident sweetie pies, Campbell and ER's Noah Wyle, play unrepentant sons of bitches, but it's not enough.

The script is a jumbled bag of war-movie cliches, and hack director J. Lee Thompson--who surpassed himself precisely once, with Cape Fear--is on auto-pilot throughout.

Weepy, overwrought love story.

The dialog is dumb, the acting is dull, the attempts at physical humor are for the most part predictable.

Just painfully dull.

Lame, derivative comedy.

The film delivers lots of high-pitched hysteria but never manages to make its spoiled protagonists interesting.

Slight, over-long.

The first few films in this series are both amusing and produced with high technical values, but this fourth in the string is a poorly scripted, anemic production.

The profoundly unconvincing CGI work only makes the sorry screenplay and lackluster performances look worse.

The lesson is that money can buy a vanity project, but it can't buy talent, imagination or an audience.

A morose, slow-moving action picture.

Though the action is competently staged, there's little else in this film to hold one's attention.

What really sinks the film, though, is the utter absence of chemistry between Perry and Willis.

Is there anything more irritating than an exploitation filmmaker with self-referentiality on the brain?

Dopey "thriller."