Entertainment

IT’S ILL-CONCEIVED

A fine performance by Evan Rachel Wood is wasted on “The Life Before Her Eyes,” an overwrought and patently offensive anti- abortion drama from the director of the accomplished “House of Sand and Fog.” Director Vadim Perelman doesn’t play fair.

At first, this pretends to be a drama about the aftermath of a Columbine-like high school attack. Wood’s wild-child Diana and her devout pal Maureen (Eva Amurri) are cornered by a teenage gunman in a restroom. He makes them choose which one will die.

Flashbacks before the attack alternate with scenes of Diana, now 16 years older (played by a zombie-like Uma Thurman), who apparently survived – but is wracked by guilt that strains her relationships with her husband and her daughter.

But wait, why does the world look completely unchanged – the same cellphones and computers – in scenes that are set 16 years apart? And why is the Zombies’ “She’s Not There” playing on the soundtrack?

Well, it seems the teenage Diana had an abortion – and the business in the ladies’ room may be a bit of karmic payback. Yikes.

There are many shots of flowers in “The Life Before Her Eyes,” which was called “In Bloom” before it got sent to Hollywood’s equivalent of the witness protection program. But there’s no prettying up the sheer ugliness of the moral equivalence it’s suggesting here.

THE LIFE BEFORE HER EYES

Stillborn drama.

Running time: 90 minutes. Rated R (violence, profanity, drugs). At the E-Walk, the Lincoln Square, the Cinema 1, the Sunshine.