A good cast can’t save “The Lodger,” the utterly wrongheaded fourth movie version of a 1910 novel inspired by Jack the Ripper that was most famously filmed by Alfred Hitchcock in 1926.
David Ondaatje’s edition is set in present-day West Hollywood, where it mysteriously rains all the time and a police detective (Alfred Molina) is trying to track down a slasher of prostitutes who is copying an earlier serial killer who modeled himself on the 19th-century Ripper.
Also wasting their time in this preposterous bore – which, by all rights, should have gone straight to DVD – are Hope Davis as a possibly delusional landlady, Simon Baker in the title role, and Rachael Leigh Cook as Molina’s daughter.
Running time: 96 minutes. Rated R (gore, violence, profanity). At the Quad, 13th Street between Fifth and Sixth avenues.