Ok, it’s a little bit “Silence of the Lambs” and a little bit “Seven”, but not as creepy or as suspenseful as either.

Let’s call it “Silence of the Sevens.”

Our movie opens with a rather large traveling salesman having a bite to eat at a roadside café during a thunderstorm in the middle of the night.

Ohhhhh ….scary kids.

The lightning flashes and a silhouette of Ben Kingsley appears in the window. The audience chuckles because you’d know that bald head and set of jumbo ears anywhere. Would it have killed them to give him an afro?

At least some Brit Pop bed head a la Oasis?

ANYWAY, Ben is one creepy little dude. He sits his ass in the seat across from our burly traveling salesman and starts tossing charcoal etchings onto the table that make Edvard Munch’s “The Scream” look positively cheery. I don’t know how tall Ben Kingsley is in real life but I’m thinking that he’s in there somewhere between Prince and Dustin Hoffman.

In short…. Ben is short.

If I was eating my grilled cheese sandwich in the middle of nowhere and Gary Coleman started tossing smudged sketches of screaming babies in front of me I’d stab him with my fork and stuff his size 3’s into a cup holder. Not this guy. He gets spooked and shambles off into the wet, deserted, dark, parking lot all alone because we all know that’s what we’d do if Charles Manson asked us for the ketchup on Interstate 45.

As luck would have it he doesn’t check the back seat and this has really, REALLY bad consequences for him Ahhh yes.

The old ’serial killer hidden in the back seat trick’. It’s nice to see the classics still have legs in Hollywood.

Bring on the FBI agent!!

Shall we go with the “gifted but just out of the academy” character, or the cop who is in trouble with his superiors so they stuck him out in the middle of nowhere?

Decisions, decisions….

Agent Mackelway suffers from headaches and visions which get worse as he starts getting baited by Ben’s character. His fax machine gets clogged up with posters of missing children with 6 digit numbers scrawled along the top but he keeps investigating these grown men who end up dead and are missing their eyelids. What’s the connection?

Throughout it all Ben plays a weird tape recorded message that places him into a trance as he sketches more posters that look like photos from a Marilyn Manson concert. After each episode he seals the sketches in a large envelope and labels them carefully. It’s very important for serial killers to be neat and organized in Hollywood.

That’s why people have nothing to fear from me. I live in filth and clutter. Forget about me killing you or your loved ones, I can’t even be bothered killing the germs in my apartment. The only thing I kill is time as I look at the mop in the corner and say “ehhhh… I’ll clean up that spaghetti stain LATER.”

If I ever start ironing my shirts start to worry!!

Of course we’re missing the love interest so Agent Mackelway’s previous “partner-slash-lover” (played by Carrie Anne Moss) is brought in to help him out. A www… that was nice of them, except they hate each other.

When did hatred become foreplay in real life anyway? I know it’s a rule in Hollywood that whenever someone annoys you it usually leads to a sweaty embrace somewhere but I only screw people I hate metaphorically.

I’d like to see more of these former couples putting sugar in each other’s gas tanks or at the very least dropping a cup of hot coffee in each other’s laps.

To no one’s surprise Agent Mackleway starts to wig out after the 50th headache and after he suggests an insane theory about what Ben is doing he’s forced to “take some time off”.

Let’s go to Beverly Hills!!

Oooops, wrong movie. Sorry.

Whew… that was almost 20 minutes in between Hollywood clichés.

As usual when a cop is forced off the case he keeps his weapon and a large file folder full of information so that he can discuss in vivid detail with his “still on the job” partner what he’s going to do so that when he finally confronts the serial killer by himself, his former lover can save his ass at the last second.

Or something to that effect.

They attempt a twist in this movie but I figured it out after 10 minutes so let’s call it a quarter turn.

It’s not horrible, but I still say no one is creepier than good old Kevin Spacey in Seven, or Anthony Hopkins in Silence of the Lambs..