Paul Schrader’s “The Canyons’’ is not the worst movie of 2013 — it’s marginally better than “InAPPpropriate Comedy” and “Scary Movie 5,” two even worse bombs that Lindsay Lohan also lent her rapidly diminishing talents to — but it is surely the most boring I’ve seen.
Forget the rumors of explicit sex — I’ve seen high school hygiene films that are steamier than this snoozer, notwithstanding the underwhelming “mainstream’’ debut of popular porn star James Deen, who shouldn’t give up his day job.
Hard-partying Lohan, who at 27 often looks like she’s going on 50 thanks to the eyeball-gougingly ugly, harshly lit digital photography and heavy makeup, plays the girlfriend of Deen, a wealthy Malibu trust funder who is financing a low-budget slasher flick.
At her suggestion, he has cast the bartender-model-actor boyfriend (Nolan Funk) of his assistant (Amanda Brooks) in the lead, despite the absence of any noticeable talent.
Soon the dead-eyed Deen — whose character is supposed to be menacing but comes off more like petulant — begins correctly suspecting there is something going on between Funk and Lohan, who indeed used to be an item before Deen came along.
Deen, meanwhile, is doing it with his yoga teacher (Tenille Houston) — who has connections with both Funk and Lohan.
Deen’s also into foursomes, especially if they include hot-looking guys.
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I tried hard, but it was impossible to care about any of these vapid 20-something characters or anything that was happening to them. It was hard enough staying awake for 99 minutes of their prattling about fame and privacy, not to mention endlessly texting each other.
Yes, there is nudity — Deen and a couple of other guys briefly bare all, but Lohan and the gals only go topless.
The foursome is so dimly lit, it’s hard to tell what’s going on. Given the general technical ineptitude of the filmmaking on display in this crowdsourced cheapie, I’m not sure that was intentional.
Schrader, the writer of “Taxi Driver’’ whose directing résumé includes such long-ago racy fare as “Hardcore,’’ “American Gigolo’’ and “Cat People,’’ can do nothing with this hopeless cast — it’s like wringing blood from a stone. He lets scenes run on so endlessly I wonder if he fell asleep at the editing table.
The director is admittedly handicapped by a lame script by Bret Easton Ellis (“American Psycho,’’ “Less Than Zero’’) that’s all tease and no sleaze.
There’s a big scene where Deen pressures the gay producer of the porn flick to threaten Funk with dismissal unless he has sex with the producer, but we never find out what happens.
And when Deen finally does go psycho — after a session with shrink Gus Van Sant — the action takes place off-screen.
Given Deen’s lack of acting chops, maybe that’s for the best.
Lohan was once a promising actress, but now this sad celebrity train wreck will lend her shaky presence to any piece of dreck that will have her.
It’s harder to excuse the Film Society of Lincoln Center for hosting the world premiere of a fiasco like “The Canyons’’ last night.
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