Persons Unknown

For now, "Persons" is delightfully weird and foreboding.

The premise is intriguing, although it's difficult to watch without backseat driving.

While this straightforward, unapologetically derivative thriller won't blow your mind, it's a whole lot better than ABC's "Happy Town" or CBS's "Harper's Island" and may turn out to be like NBC's "Journeyman" -- a slice of genre entertainment that slowly developed into a worthwhile weekly commitment (and, er, yes, was canceled too soon.

The premiere is heavy on set-up and light on action. It's more about mood than plot. Whether that will hold up over 13 hours is questionable.

Persons Unknown was originally developed for Syfy, and it shows. It's all eerie music, unanswered questions and disturbing discoveries, leavened only very occasionally by humor.

A series that doesn't give viewers enough reason to care in its premiere episode.

This new suspense drama, about a small group of people who wake up as hostages in an empty, creepy hotel, has promise, but it also has familiar and ominous signs of a short life expectancy.

The real problem with the pilot is not with the situation, it's with the people placed in it. Not only are none of the seven characters particularly interesting, they simply fail to react realistically to their bizarre circumstances.

They don't promise to be more than a collection of types, like the generic figures in TV's "Poseidon Adventure'' remake. And if we don't care about them, then it's hard to care about the possible threats that surround them.

Take "Lost," mash it up with "The Prisoner," throw in a little "Saw," over-season with badly written and poorly delivered dialogue, glaze with horror-film lighting, dream-scene camerawork and elevators like you haven't seen since "The Shining," and you've got "Persons Unknown."