Here's a nasty bit of business.

Surveillance is a movie about serial killers and taciturn cops, a festival of carnage that's sometimes funny and sometimes waaay over the line.

Surveillance is the second film from Jennifer Lynch, a filmmaker doomed to go through life being known as (1) David Lynch's daughter, and (2) the director of Boxing Helena. Yikes.

Someone's brains get bashed in at the start of Surveillance, a film that never hesitates to feature blood splatter or crunchy death noises. Set in some desolate backwater where nothing happens on a daily basis, Surveillance reflects its own surroundings with scrappy, vaguely colourless filmmaking. The movie often works more like a play than a film, and it's saturated with dread.

As the bodies mount, two FBI agents turn up in town to show the locals a thing or two about investigative work. The agents are played by Bill Pullman and Julia Ormond. The village policemen who've been on the case thus far do not bother to hide their resentment.

Pullman and Ormond have to gather the facts from three unreliable witnesses: A little girl (Ryan Simpkins); a junkie (Pell James) and one of the policemen (Kent Harper).

Each witness reveals far more than he or she intends, and Lynch uses flashbacks to show viewers the truth, versus what each witness relates. The local cops, it turns out, like to get through a dull day by creating havoc where none exists. The pretty junkie is not above stealing from the dead. The child doesn't always understand what she's seen. Having the same tale told by various people has been described as Rashomon-like. It isn't, though.

Surveillance has some nifty twists and turns and most of the performances are weirdly satisfying, but the real mystery is why Lynch, so adept at creating dread and a generally creepy atmosphere, undermines it all with gross death detail. Did we really need that erotic asphyxiation? One thinks not.

The police station secretary (played by Caroline Aaron), says something to the FBI agents about "needing to know every detail" as she hands over a coroner's report. The line is delivered in a way that suggests Lynch wanted it to stand out; are we the ones who have to know every detail?

So maybe Surveillance is a movie about the viewer's insatiable need to see all the available ghastly horror. In that safe, movie screen, arm's-length sort of way.

Still, no thanks.

(This film is rated 18-A)

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