Morally dubious American tattoo artist Jason Behr travels the world giving folks ethnic themed tattoos which he falsely claims have magical healing powers. In Singapore, he learns of the ancient Samoan tattoo tradition and steals a key tool involved in the specific art, cutting himself on it in the process. Behr travels to work in New Zealand, getting involved with a girl, but he soon realizes that every new tattoo he crafts winds up killing the recipient of the body art. And, guess what, his new girlfriend wants a tattoo!

   This Singapore-New Zealand co-production has an unusual pedigree, and a ho-hum script by Jonathan King, director of the enjoyable, much lighter BLACK SHEEP. It riffs on a few earlier horror stories featuring evil body art, notably the series 4 X FILES episode “Never Again”, in which Jodie Foster memorably voiced a malevolent, manipulative tattoo.

   There probably is a decent horror movie to be made around this subject matter, but this particular one swiftly sinks under the weight of modern horror clichés, including the usual stealing from recent Asian chillers. This means the 300^th appearance this decade of the old bathroom mirror fake scare and the umpteenth instance of something indefinable flitting past the audience’s vision in the background.

   It’s a handsome-looking picture, clearly made on a significantly higher budget than a lot of the straight-to-DVD schlock sharing its shelf space. It also has genuinely striking moments that intermittently suggest the promise of what might have been. A fatality in swimming pool involves a victim overcome by geysers of water, ink and blood, and there’s an arresting scene in which a very heavily tattooed guy erupts into fountains of gore. When it’s gruesome, the movie sparks into life : a show-stopping visceral interlude featuring a hospitalized victim is capped by a grim shot of her eyeball splitting in half.

   Sadly, the aforementioned moments are the exception within an otherwise plodding, deadly-dull and vaguely pretentious flick. There are far too many arty loungers and the one-note American leading man Behr, playing a complex character drawn inexorably to the dark side, shows all the range and conviction of a daytime soap opera’s resident hunk.