C+

Given that “Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang” is divided into segments titled after books by Raymond Chandler, a little story about that author might be in order. When Chandler’s convoluted mystery “The Big Sleep” was being converted into a film script (it was eventually made by Howard Hawks in 1946, and has justly become a classic), it’s reported that the writers–who included William Faulkner–contacted Chandler for enlightenment about certain twists of the plot that they didn’t understand. They couldn’t tell, in particular, whether one character’s death was a suicide, an accident, or a murder–and if the latter, who the killer was. Chandler thought the matter over and replied that he had no idea. Shane Black might have to respond the same way if he were asked to explain some of the turns of this writing-directing debut, a picture that’s essentially an updated takeoff on 1940s film noir classics like “Sleep.” The movie is an elaborate conceit that buffs will have fun deconstructing. But ultimately it’s just too clever for its own good–so knowing, so self-satisfied, that by the end the smug artificiality of it all has become well-nigh intolerable. The actors seem to be winking at the audience every thirty seconds or so, and eventually you feel that you’ve been nudged in the ribs so relentlessly that your bones are beginning to ache–and not from laughter.

The underlying premise here is that Harry Lockhart (Robert Downey, Jr.), a petty thief, escapes the police one December night by stumbling into an audition for a Hollywood movie role and proving so convincing playing his weepy scene that he’s at once whisked off to California for a screen test. Since he’s up for the part of a pulp private eye, the studio assigns him a teacher–a real P.I. named Perry (Val Kilmer), who just happens to be gay. Harry, though, takes his would-be shamus screen persona too seriously when he gets involved with Harmony Faith Lane (Michelle Monaghan), an old childhood sweetheart whom he convinces that he actually is a gumshoe. She pushes him to disentangle the connections that link several dead women, one of whom turns out to be her sister. Also involved in the convoluted goings-on are a rich heiress and her father Harlan Dexter (Corbin Bernsen), a former actor still involved in the movie biz. But what the movie is mostly about is overripe dialogue, especially that delivered by Downey in the smart-aleck narration that runs through the picture; outrageous plots twists involving misidentified bodies and wild motivations; lots of slapstick violence, including one “Trouble With Harry” sequence about a clumsy attempt to dispose of an inconvenient corpse and another elaborate gag in which a severed digit plays a prominent role; plenty of gay-themed banter between Downey and Kilmer; and a big finale–or really, series of climaxes–which include fistfights, car chases and some gunfire, too. Though there’s an effort at the close to explain everything, it’s a pretty perfunctory effort with tongue firmly in cheek (apart from a misguided bit of business about child molestation).

There’s little question that Black is a canny wordsmith, or that he’s peppered his script with an abundance of amusing lines. And the virtual incomprehensibility of the plot is part of the joke. Downey certainly holds up his end of the equation–even though Harry is pretty much an insufferable smart-ass, he delivers the character’s voiceovers with the proper combination of sass and whimsy–and Kilmer seems to be having enormous fun playing a smooth, slick pro who just happens to be unabashedly gay. And while the rest of the cast doesn’t match them–Monaghan is particularly disappointing, never generating the Bacall-like heat Holly demands–the picture has been stylishly made in all the technical departments, with a slick production design by Aaron Osborne and elegant widescreen camerawork by Michael Barrett.

But in the final analysis “Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang” is all affectation and no affect. You can easily admire the skill with which Black has constructed this elaborate joke, but rather like Steve Martin’s “Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid” (1982), an even more extravagant riff on this genre, ultimately it runs out of gas and becomes a rather exhausting jape.

C

When Roger Ebert tried to explain the reason for the success of the original “Willard” years ago, he opined that it might have been that people had been waiting for years to see Ernest Borgnine get eaten by rats. Well, Borgnine isn’t one of the actors who provide nourishment for the nasty vampire bats that populate “The Roost,” but anybody looking for an old-fashioned, poverty-row level horror flick might check out Ti West’s no-budget no-brainer, about four twentysomething pals attacked at a remote farmhouse one night by a bunch of flying, blood-sucking rodents, anyway. (Not only that, but their bites turn the victims into flesh-eating zombies–for reasons that remain conveniently unexplained.) Normally, ever since “Attack of the Killer Tomatoes,” or at least since “Scream,” this sort of thing would be played with a knowingly satirical wink to the audience. But here it’s done pretty much straight–with the elderly couple who own the place (Richard Little and Barbara Wilhide) quietly offed before the quartet (played by brother-sister duo Wil and Vanessa Horneff, along with Karl Jacob and Sean Reid) arrive after their car’s run off an isolated road into a ditch. Then the four are quickly threatened by the bats themselves. Naturally they’re picked off one by one until a properly shocking finale. The only other characters who show up during the carnage are a cop (John Speredakos), who according to the conventions of the genre, proves of very little help, and a tow-truck driver (Larry Fessenden, who made the creepy “Wendigo” and executive produced here), who’s even less.

On its own, “The Roost” has some of the virtues–and plenty of the defects–of this sort of bare-bones shlock fare. On the one hand, it manages some genuine fright moments; West exhibits a skillful hand in staging some of the sequences (like one in which the old woman suddenly appears in the distance from outside the frame while one of the youngsters cowers in terror), and he and cameraman Eric Robbins fashion some really striking compositions using light and shadow–a necessity here, since most of the time the action is shot in such darkness (in a huge barn) that one suspects the producer couldn’t even afford the bulbs to illuminate it. (At times the screen is entirely black except for a few shards of light, and sound effects must carry things forward.) By the standards of such stuff, the acting isn’t too bad either, with Horneff–whom you might remember from kid roles in movies like “Ghost in the Machine”–cutting a stalwart but hardly flawless character as the most heroic member of the group.

But the tension generated by the little flick is severely undercut by a wraparound device featuring Tom Noonan as a ghoulish TV host introducing bad movies on some cheesy local channel frightfest series. By itself these segments are amusing (though why they’re in black and white while the movie is in color is something to ponder), though they’re played awfully slowly and go on rather too long. But they have the effect of treating the movie as though it belonged on “Mystery Science Theater”–a feeling that might all too easily infect the audience. One Noonan bit in particular, which interrupts the picture in mid-stream, saps the energy just when it should be accelerating.

Of course “The Roost” can’t be generally recommended; the production is so threadbare that it often looks like something made by students in their own back yard. But West shows signs of real talent, even if he doesn’t have the resources needed to put it to best use. Still, for those who appreciate this sort of thing, it’s worth searching out.