Persons Unknown

Creator Christopher McQuarrie (The Usual Suspects) is no stranger to pretzel-twist plots and out-of-the-left-field surprises, and his new series, about a gaggle of strangers, abducted and abandoned in a CCTV-monitored ghost town, promises both in spades.

While this straightforward, unapologetically derivative thriller won't blow your mind, it's a whole lot better than ABC's "Happy Town" or CBS's "Harper's Island" and may turn out to be like NBC's "Journeyman" -- a slice of genre entertainment that slowly developed into a worthwhile weekly commitment (and, er, yes, was canceled too soon.

The premiere is heavy on set-up and light on action. It's more about mood than plot. Whether that will hold up over 13 hours is questionable.

A series that doesn't give viewers enough reason to care in its premiere episode.

Persons Unknown was originally developed for Syfy, and it shows. It's all eerie music, unanswered questions and disturbing discoveries, leavened only very occasionally by humor.

Take "Lost," mash it up with "The Prisoner," throw in a little "Saw," over-season with badly written and poorly delivered dialogue, glaze with horror-film lighting, dream-scene camerawork and elevators like you haven't seen since "The Shining," and you've got "Persons Unknown."

Persons Unknown utterly fails to entice.