Here's more proof that devil-movie thrillers are diabolically hard to do. Chuck Russell, the man who made The Mask, assembles a great cast headed by Kim Basinger, in her first film after her Oscar for LA Confidential, starts with a fine premise and chucks a lot of money at a flashy-looking film with fine effects. But all these good ingredients don't make a quality pudding. Basinger plays a New York nurse, whose drug-addicted kid sister (Angela Bettis) suddenly saddles her with her autistic newborn child. Six years later, Bettis and her mysterious new husband Rufus Sewell abduct the little girl (Holliston Coleman). Enter FBI agent Jimmy Smits, an expert in ritual homicide and occult crime, who takes up the case when he realises the girl shares the same birth date as several other recently missing kids. Basinger gives an entirely acceptable performance as the little girl's auntie (though being an auntie isn't really good casting for her), but Christina Ricci is wasted with nothing to do as a member of a religious cult. After a promising start, the story just isn't nailbiting enough, and soon you just want to start laughing instead of sitting in fear when it all becomes very silly with Basinger's visions of demons slipping behind rubbish bins in an alley and the child's mysterious abductor turning into a monster when the subway train pulls out.