WHAT a shocker from Keanu Reeves! Too hot on the heels of his wife-beating backwoods brute in the gothic thriller The Gift, he takes a walk on the even darker side in The Watcher, as this cartoon actor with the lady-killer looks turns sadistic lady killer.

Reeves lollops around as David Griffin, a meticulous murderer who picks out lone females, then studies their movements and daily routines before kidnapping them and applying the finishing, strangling touch with piano wire.

This serious killer's fatal flaw is his need to play games with the police, a cat-and-mouse manoeuvre that leads Griffin to pursue FBI agent Joel Campbell (James Spader) from Los Angeles to Chicago, where this stressed-out detective is struggling to cope with a combination of guilt and pill dependency, his pain occasionally numbed by visits to a psychiatrist (Marisa Tomei).

Griffin believes he and Campbell have a mutual need for each other, taunting him by sending him photos of his next victim with a 24-hour deadline. Yet there is no suspense here, and for all the flashy flashbacks and trendy, video-style directing of Joe Charbanic, The Watcher is as dreary as it as derivative.

Reeves may not want to be pinned down as a pin-up, so his choice of role has gone from Speed to seedy but his acting - never his strongest suit - is stretched beyond the limit by this shift of emphasis. Vacant and slothful, his voyeuristic serial killer is as chilling as a tropical heatwave.

The Watcher isn't worth watching, dude.