MANILA, Philippines--There are no horses in ?Horsemen,? unless, to misuse the idiom a bit, you count the dead one that?s being flogged throughout the film. To begin with, it?s not the first movie to get its thematic inspiration from the Bible and the Book of Revelations. Any self-respecting film should at least try to have a new (and better) way of telling a story that?s already been told, and this the production fails to do.

Whatever?s being explored here is well-mapped, oft-traversed territory, but the movie sticks to the same, old routes. In ?Horsemen,? Detective Aidan Breslin (Dennis Quaid) is in charge of solving a serial murder, where the perpetrator thinks of himself as the four horsemen of the Apocalypse sent to wreak havoc on earth.

Mutilated corpses turn up, and the line, ?Come and see,? is scribbled on the scene. Suspending the victims? bodies is a particularly gruesome touch, and that mostly takes care of the horror part of this thriller. Excuse the pun, but those poor prosthetic corpses are the only ones who are on tenterhooks.

Too predictable

The movie, while containing a good number of shocks and gore, is simply not taut enough and is too predictable to be riveting. Directed by Jonas Åkerlund, this chiller feels like a pale copy of the now classic ?Seven? (1995).

It starts out promisingly enough, with Åkerlund managing to build an atmosphere of disquiet as the movie shifts from a scene of bloody revelation in the snowy woods to a frozen neon-lit city, where our battered but still heroic detective trudges from gory crime scenes and autopsy tables to the stark reality of his home.

Breslin and his sons are still grieving over the recent death of his wife. You get the feeling that Åkerlund may have been aiming for something more psychological, but the script doesn?t leave much room for that kind of layering.

It?s a shame, since Quaid has a very real, physical presence, and his talent could have been stretched further. As it is, his performance is the main reason why you don?t tune out entirely, even after you?ve already guessed how it?s all going to end.

Ziyi Zhang also makes an appearance, though she?s onscreen for only a few minutes, and her character is too sketchy to be made much of.