In theaters

THE CELL. Directed by Tarsem. Written by Mark Protosevich. 108 minutes. Rated R.

Three-quarters of the way through “The Cell,” the new serial-killer movie starring Jennifer Lopez as a troubled psychologist, Vincent D’Onofrio as a troubled madman, and Vince Vaughn as a troubled FBI agent, my notes were uniformly in favor of panning the thin story and getting behind the artistry, which is easily the best of the year.

“Pretentious,” I wrote. “Great visuals but only for the sake of great visuals. There will be those who’ll seek meaning in all this elaborate hoo-ha – they’ll try to convince audiences there’s meaning in the special effects, just as they did with “The Matrix” – but there isn’t.

“The images mean nothing. Worse, the story has the idea that its grisly depiction of a sadomasochistic serial killer will shock and repel us, but it doesn’t. We’ve seen nipple rings before, witnessed the occasional leather harness, the infrequent ball and chain. Am I supposed to be disturbed by seeing a man hanging from the rings he’s sewn into his own back? Not in this film. And that’s just the problem – the film depends on its melee of gore and special effects to give it the psychological depth it craves, when it should have, in fact, turned only to its characters.” And then – out of nowhere – it suddenly does.

Near the end of the film, when its almost too late, comes the turning point, which has everything to do with Jennifer Lopez and the lingering shot in which director Tarsem holds on her face as she reacts to all that’s come before: a serial killer has kidnapped a beautiful woman and put her in an enormous glass tank slowly filling with water. If help doesn’t come soon, the woman will drown.

The problem for Peter Novak (Vaughn) of the FBI is that nobody knows where the woman is. The serial killer, Carl Stargher (D’Onofrio), has been caught, but he’s certainly not going to be talking anytime soon – he’s in a coma. In a last ditch effort to learn where the woman is, Lopez’s character, Catherine Deane, uses a risky scientific procedure to enter the serial killer’s mind, a beautifully fertile place that Tarsem, who dropped his surname after directing music videos for Nine Inch Nails and R.E.M., paints in broad strokes of vivid vulgarity.

It is in this murderer’s hypnotic subconscious that Catherine wanders, learning things about his childhood that finally give the film the weight and power it needs. It’s not what she discovers that’s remarkable (it won’t be revealed here, but it’s actually rather cliche). What is remarkable is how carefully Tarsem has stacked his film to build to this surprisingly stirring denouement, in which a succession of truths is revealed – not the least of which is how damning a place the world can be.

Lopez’s haunted expression nicely captures the horror of her situation – and Tarsem is right there capturing it in close-up. It’s a fine piece of acting and directing, both of which bring unexpected cohesion to a film that, in the end, isn’t nearly as slight as I’d originally thought.

Grade: B

SAVING GRACE. Directed by Nigel Cole. Written by Craig Ferguson and Mark Crowdy. 93 minutes. Rated R. Now playing, Railroad Square Cinema, Waterville.

The Grace in Nigel Cole’s “Saving Grace” is Grace Trefethan (Brenda Blethyn), a plucky Cornish horticulturist who gets a nasty little surprise after her husband walks out of an airborne airplane – and dies. Apparently, Mr. Trefethan was leading a secret life, one that included a saucy London mistress named Honey (Diana Quick) and too many bad investments to count in too many bogus business deals gone wrong.

Now shocked and rattled and penniless – not to mention faced with having to pay off her husband’s enormous debts-Grace is in a quandary. With banks calling daily, checks bouncing by the minute and her close-knit community of likable friends all aware of her embarrassing predicament, she’s at a loss. Does she sell her beautiful, 300-year-old manor house to pay off debts she herself never incurred? Or could there be some other way to come up with the 300,000 pounds she needs to stay rooted in a home she loves?

“Saving Grace” answers those questions with all the verve and style of public television’s “Are You Being Served” and “Keeping Up Appearances.” But director Cole takes the British farce into deeper territory – Grace is no caricature; she’s a richly realized character who’s genuinely moving in several key, well-written scenes.

As always, Blethyn is superb, as is Craig Ferguson (“The Drew Carey Show”) as her charming handyman, a likable dolt with a big heart whose love of marijuana does terrific things for Grace’s bank account.

Grade: A-

Christopher Smith is the Bangor Daily News film critic. His reviews appear Monday and Thursday in the NEWS, and Tuesday and Thursday on “NEWS CENTER at 5:30” and “NEWS CENTER at 11.”