The Wraith

Directed by Mike Marvin, The Wraith details the violence that ensues after a mysterious drifter (Charlie Sheen’s Jake Kesey) arrives in a small town and immediately raises the ire of local hothead Packard Walsh (Nick Cassavetes). It’s a promising setup that’s employed to underwhelming and oddly confusing effect by Marvin, as the writer/director delivers a sluggish thriller that suffers from a lack of cohesiveness in its half-baked narrative – with the myriad of supernatural elements left mostly unexplained and underdeveloped. (The true nature of Sheen’s one-dimensional figure remains murky up until past the one-hour mark, which certainly contributes heavily to the predominantly uninvolving atmosphere.) The picture’s various problems are exacerbated by an almost total lack of interesting, compelling characters, and it’s clear, certainly, that Marvin’s decision to emphasize Cassavetes’ increasingly grating figure proves rather disastrous – as Cassavetes turns in as hopelessly ineffective and unconvincing a performance as one could possibly envision. The entirely anticlimactic finale ensures that The Wraith goes out with much, much more of a whimper than a bang, which is disappointing, certainly, given the relative potential of a setup that needed plenty more exposition and backstory to actually work.

** out of ****