ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ

There must have been a mainstream Hollywood film thicker and more incoherent than this. None, however, springs immediately to mind.

A riff on Agatha Christie's classic novel "10 Little Indians" - filmed best in 1945's "And Then There Were None" - it slides from intriguing into untenable and then idiotic.

One dark and stormy night, a bunch of ostensible strangers find themselves holed up in a dingy motel. The surrounding roads are blocked by flooding, one of their party is seriously injured, and the arrival of a con-in-transit sparks a series of bloody deaths.

Whodunit? James Mangold. The "CopLand" director assembles another quality ensemble cast, but can't even muster the conditional pleasures of his oestrogen-drenched "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" clone, "Girl, Interrupted".

This is a serial killer slasher movie with pretensions: a largely scare-free 'chiller' played depressingly straight, as if unaware of its own preposterousness.

With nods to "The Omen", "The Shining", and "Psycho", it doesn't feel self-referential so much as unoriginal - devoid of intelligence or scares. The movie it most resembles is "The Three", the moronic blockbuster script of Charlie Kaufman's numbskull twin Donald, in the delirious "Adaptation.".

It's probable that John Cusack - who cameoed in Spike Jonze's brilliant comedy - is well aware of the "Identity" problems. But his performance shows no sly spoofiness, merely the tired lines of a doing-it-for-the-money job.

Others save the picture from straight-to-retail ignominy, with a fine turn from John Hawkes as the weasily motel manager, and a relatively restrained Ray Liotta excelling as a brusque cop.

The underused Clea DuVall does what she can with a limp character, but you'll stop caring about her or anyone else long before trudging out of the theatre, insulted by the cheap resolution.

This is typical modern Hollywood horror: frightening only because it's so dumb.