The Lodger

This serial-killer procedural is about a West Hollywood slasher who apes Jack the Ripper, but the real crime is the travesty writer-director David Ondaatje perpetrates on Hitchcock. Like Hitch’s 1927 silent classic of the same name, The Lodger is based on a novella about a mysterious loner (Baker) who takes a couple’s spare room as a killing spree strikes the neighborhood. Alfred Molina has a fair stab as the cop on the case, but the script is stultifyingly clichéd, the execution atrociously attention-seeking, and the violence done to Hitch’s signature shots and motifs inexcusable.