Entertainment

‘No One Lives’ review

It took about three days to capture Richard Speck, who murdered eight nurses in one night. That’s because Speck, like most mass killers, was stupid as well as evil. “No One Lives” reimagines Speck as an uncatchable genius, since there’s no other genius at work in this movie.

Director Ryuhei Kitamura (“The Midnight Meat Train”) and screenwriter David Cohen, in their dogged avoidance of all innovation, create a psychopath (Luke Evans) who delights in implausibly elaborate killings. The victims are actors who gesticulate miserably in hopes of resembling a criminal gang.

There is no flair, no suspense, not one frame composed with more in mind than getting a Beavis-type to chortle, “Cool.” There’s nothing to do but wait in queasy catatonia for the next cliché: the babe strung up from a tree, the man shredded into a pile of viscera, the psycho wreathed in dry-ice smoke like Spinal Tap in concert.

The sole crumbs of interest are a shot or two of Adelaide Clemens as the heroine. She narrows her tiny blue eyes on an unseen horizon, as though hoping for a better movie to burst in and rescue her.

“No One Lives” is so unspeakably dull that it can’t even offend, save when the filmmakers have the almighty nerve to quote Alfred Hitchcock and Jonathan Demme. It would be far better to rip off a William Castle movie, and aim for a level they have a prayer of actually hitting.