Adapted from William Trevor's creepy and insinuating novel, Atom Egoyan's Felicia's Journey has all the earmarks of his finest work—immutable family trauma, a fascination with video and voyeurism, an illuminating puzzle-piece structure—which makes its ultimate failure all the more curious. Egoyan's last film, 1997's astonishingly beautiful The Sweet Hereafter, marked his first attempt to incorporate another writer's vision (in this case, a Russell Banks novel) into his usual thematic obsessions. Their union resulted in his most fully formed and emotionally accessible film to date, but Trevor's book isn't nearly as warm and psychologically open, encouraging the sort of remoteness that tends to draw complaints from the director's critics. In an effective twist on the typical serial-killer profile, Felicia's Journey presents a mild, crisply dressed, endearingly old-fashioned Bob Hoskins as a catering manager in the grim industrial town of Birmingham, England. Though appreciated for his anachronisms, Hoskins is stuck in the grips of his troubled childhood, compulsively watching old videotapes of overbearing mother Arsinée Khanjian's popular '50s cooking show; the first clue to his pathology is a roomful of unopened boxes containing ancient-model food processors. His victims are lost, vulnerable young women like Elaine Cassidy, a pregnant Irish teenager searching for the English boyfriend who left her behind without leaving a forwarding address. As Hoskins slowly lures her into his trap, Egoyan uses exquisitely placed flashbacks that reveal their painful connections while the situation grows more dangerous. Though skilled and brilliant in patches—the final shot, in particular, is a stunning nod to Egoyan idol Michelangelo Antonioni—Felicia's Journey lacks the hypnotic allure of his other films. This can partly be blamed on composer Mychael Danna's intrusive score, but worse, there's little to be learned about these characters that isn't introduced right away. At his best, Egoyan is a master of character-driven suspense, but Felicia's Journey explains its mysteries away.