In theaters

THE WATCHER 93 minutes, R, directed by Joe Charbanic; written by Darcy Meyers, David Elliot, and Clay Ayers.

After seeing Joe Charbanic’s “The Watcher,” all I can say is this: It’s a good thing Keanu Reeves, the movie’s star, is busy filming back-to-back sequels of “The Matrix.”

After last month’s blowout bomb, “The Replacements,” and now with this embarrassing piece of serial killing hokum, the actor soon will be in desperate need of a hit to keep his appeal at the box office.

And how about that appeal? What is it, exactly, that keeps people coming back to Keanu Reeves movies? The acting? Not likely – Reeves is to acting what Firestone has become to tires.

So maybe it’s his sterling elocution, in which each word in each of his films seems to have been painfully and thoughtfully worked out weeks before it rolls off his tongue and passes over his lips. Is there anything more annoying than the flat, emotionally dead way Reeves speaks? Oh, yes, of course – his acting.

But I digress.

“The Watcher” is late summer’s second serial killer film, and it’s so bad people will refer to it years from now after leaving other botched movies “At least it wasn’t as bad as ‘The Watcher,”‘ they’ll say – and they’ll likely be right.

The film features Reeves as Griffin, a doughy-looking nutcase who baits an FBI agent named Campbell (James Spader) with a string of grisly murders that culminate with an attack on Marisa Tomei, of all people, an Academy Award-winning actress who’s hit rock bottom as Campbell’s psychologist.

Don’t expect any speeches from Ms. Tomei come next March.

Since the film has no interest in its characters, it turns to its gruesome bloodletting – which is over-the-top – but all the film has since it doesn’t have a script in spite of the three brilliant minds who penned its cliches, its contrivances, and its lame dialogue.

Imagine saying this to anyone with a straight face, as Reeves does here: “We need each other, we define each other. We’re yin and yang.”

How about yin and yuck?

All of this, of course, makes one long for the nuances in “Silence of the Lambs” or the satirical slashings of Mary Harron’s “American Psycho,” a film released earlier this year (and now on video) that used its serial killing madman to say something insightful about the times and our culture.

“The Watcher” has nothing to say, which would have been fine if at least it offered a measure of entertainment. It doesn’t. It’s the very worst sort of film, one that feels stacked only to score big at the box office.

But when a movie does that, more often than not it will bomb – which, after making a mere $9.1 million at the box office last weekend, is exactly what “The Watcher” did.

Grade: F

On video

MISSION TO MARS 113 minutes. Rated PG; directed by Brian De Palma; written by Jim Thomas, John Thomas, Graham Yost and Lowell Cannon.

Just imagine all the bickering that could have been heard around the world had audiences been allowed to sit in the back seat of Brian De Palma’s ill-fated “Mission to Mars”:

“Look out for that cliche!”

“There’s no intelligent life out here!”

“Blast you, De Palma! You’ll never have the right stuff!”

The execution of this sci-fi disaster is about as embarrassing as it gets, which is saying something after sitting through the wreckage of “The Watcher.”

Overly sentimentalized, overtly contrived and false and cloying on so many false and cloying levels, “Mars” wastes no time shooting straight into a black hole of stupidity. It begins with a neighborhood block party for the swaggering bunch of meatheads NASA is rocketing to Mars. God help us all if these fools are the pick of NASA’s litter.

It’s the year 2020 and the bad news here is that man still hasn’t evolved out of gross fits of sentimentality. To wit: Before these men leave for their visit with the little green men, they have a bonding moment under the stars in which they embrace each other fiercely and slap each other’s rear ends while puffing away on long, thick cigars. Armchair psychologists can make of this what they wish.

De Palma has a good cast in Tim Robbins, Gary Sinise, Connie Nielson, Don Cheadle and Jerry O’Connell, but it’s a crime what he does to them. Namely, he asks them to speak. “The universe is not chaos,” one character says with heartfelt conviction. “It’s connection! Life reaches out to life!” How about reaching out and slapping your agent?

Once on Mars, the special effects do get nifty, but who cares about nifty special effects when you can’t connect with the characters? Nobody here is real – the characters are dishrags moving about on the screen. Worse, De Palma has ripped off so many films — especially “2001: A Space Odyssey,” “Contact,” “E.T.” and “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” – that his own film takes no shape.

It’s true. “Mission to Mars” is as gaseous as a forming star, but it’s never once as spectacular.

Grade: D-

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.”

The Video Corner

East is East A

Mission to Mars D-

American Psycho B+

Any Given Sunday C+

I Dreamed of Africa B

The Next Best Thing D

The Tigger Movie B-

Supernova D-

Erin Brockovich B+

The Cider House Rules A-

Here on Earth D+

Reindeer Games C+

Princess Mononoke A

Romeo Must Die C-

Whatever It Takes B

The Beach D+

Drowning Mona C-

Magnolia A-

Angela’s Ashes B-

The Ninth Gate C+

Ride with the Devil C-

What Planet Are You From? D

The Whole Nine Yards B+

All About My Mother A

Down to You D

The Hurricane A-

My Dog Skip B+

Scream 3 B-

Hanging Up F

The Talented Mr. Ripley A

Scream 3 B-

Anna and the King A-

Sweet and Lowdown A-

Topsy-Turvy A

Bicentennial Man D+

Deuce Bigelow: Male Gigolo C-

Emperor and the Assassin B-

The Green Mile A

Light it Up C+

Play it to the Bone D+

The Third Miracle D

Girl, Interrupted B

Miss Julie C

Next Friday B-

Man on the Moon C-

Snow Falling on Cedars C

American Movie A

Eye of the Beholder F

The End of the Affair B+

Felicia’s Journey B+

Sleepy Hollow B