At the end of every year, I compose a list of the worst films of the past twelve months. Here it is, still January, and already we have Eye of the Beholder, which is not just a sure-thing for my 2000 Ten Worst list, but also the first serious contender for worst film of the year. Now I just have to suffer through nine more excruciatingly bad films and my list will be done. (The silliness begins with the opening titles, which feature an extreme close-up of an eye with the words "of the Beholder" underneath.)

Eye of the Beholder is a singularly complicated moviegoing experience. It is a film in which everything that happens seems to be arbitrary. The events of the plot occur in a disjointed and apparently random fashion. I literally had to check out the movie's official website to see what it was about. It's that nonsensical. An argument has been made to me that this is a film of nuance and subtlety rather than overt Hollywood plotting. I don't buy it; nuance and subtlety must have consistency, a sense that they serve a greater purpose. Eye of the Beholder is just dreadfully confused. Even the studio knows it - they kept the movie on the shelf for a year, then went ballistic when a negative review hit the Online Film Critics Society website a few days prior to its release.

Ashley Judd plays a murderous master of disguise in Eye of the Beholder

Ewan McGregor plays a surveillance expert known as "The Eye" who operates out of the British Embassy in Washington, DC. He is assigned by his boss to stake out the man's son, apparently the victim of a blackmail scheme. The Eye sets up shop outside of the young man's house and promptly gets an eyeful. A beautiful woman comes to visit, strips down to her underwear, and knifes the guy. She is Joanna Eris (Ashley Judd) and instead of turning her in to the police, The Eye decides to "save" her. He does this by following her from city to city, watching her kill different men, then following her to the next town.

Why does he do this? The website proclaims that The Eye becomes obsessed with the troubles that lie beneath her gorgeous facade. The movie itself never makes this idea clear. Ashley Judd is one of the most attractive actresses in film today, but seeing her kill someone in her underwear isn't exactly compelling justification for a full-blown obsession. At least, not when an entire plot is riding on this logic. We do know that The Eye hallucinates that his young daughter (who long since departed with his wife) accompanies him on surveillance missions, where she whispers to him that Joanna is just "a troubled little girl." In order for this idea to even approach workability, we should know more about the character. McGregor's mopey performance doesn't begin to suggest The Eye's supposed psychological damage, nor does the screenplay.

The Eye, as I said, follows Joanna around. Somehow, he always seems to know which city she will be traveling to next. Even more impressive, he manages to get there ahead of time and set up his equipment conveniently across the street from wherever he deduces she will be staying. Forget British intelligence - this guy should go to work for the Psychic Friends Network

I should take time out to mention that Joanna is an alleged "master of disguise." Through a series of bad wigs, she somehow manages to transform herself into Ashley Judd wearing a series of bad wigs.

The movie continues to scramble from one sketchily explained sequence to the next, perhaps the most inexplicable being The Eye's visit to Joanna's adolescent counselor (Genevieve Bujold). Her exact purpose is never made clear, and when she is brought back during a crucial confrontation, it seems without merit. Of course, that's just par for the course with this movie.

After an hour and 45 minutes of this haphazard storyline, the movie just stops. The ending comes as a complete surprise. There is no logical place for the plot to provide closure, and so it just plain stops. The last scene arrives from out of left field, as if the filmmakers couldn't come up with a finale that made any sense, so they just decided to call it quits. I'm all for ambiguous movie endings, but this one seemed arbitrary, like it was pulled out of a hat. If, in fact, Eye of the Beholder is really about what its website claims it is about, then this ending is even worse because it is totally unrelated to anything else that has transpired previously and it resolves nothing.

The writer/director is Stephan Elliott (who made the equally unwatchable Welcome to Woop Woop). With this film, I am not sure if Elliott is inept a la Ed Wood or just obnoxiously pretentious. It doesn't really matter either way. Eye of the Beholder is shockingly bad, a jumbled mess of unconvincing performances, ridiculous plot contrivances, and disjointed scenes. The only thing that makes less sense to me than this film is why anyone would bother to make it in the first place.

( out of four)

Eye of the Beholder is rated R for language, bloody violence, and brief nudity. The running time is 1 hour and 48 minutes.