Close Your Eyes

Strong acting and smartly tuned-in directing turn a run-of-the-mill detective story into a striking, sometimes harrowing blend of horror and suspense.

An enjoyable throwback to the occult psychological horror-thrillers of the late 1970s. While it flirts often with campy excess, the film remains compelling thanks to its chilly mood, stylish visuals and polished production values.

Sometimes a movie's charm materializes where you least expect it and in this particular case it emerges in the unlikely form of Henderson's character, Scotland Yard detective Janet Losey.

Visnjic is charismatic, sympathetic and believable in the role, and the first part of the film -- in which he's being drawn into the case against his will and then use his hypnotic skills to get inside the mind of the little girl -- is quite riveting.

With such plodding dialogue, there's little the actors can do to surmount the falsity, although Ms. Shaw, in her brief appearances, almost succeeds.

Willing's confused procedural -- derived from a novel by Madison Smartt Bell -- is a hasty throwback to the sado-medieval Exorcist descendants of the turn of the millennium (Stigmata, Stir of Echoes, Lost Souls). The somnolent cast can't keep the faith.

A cheaply made piece of ''psychological'' occult schlock, subjects you to that depressing stop-and-go rhythm that defines inept fantasy thrillers.