In 1996, British artist Damien Hirst shocked the art world with a provocatively grotesque work -- the body of two cows systematically sliced apart horizontally and displayed in formaldehyde-filled steel and glass containers. In The Cell, the first-time director Tarsem Singh has re-created this image with a horse. The result is bold and arresting, true, but, as with the rest of The Cell, it's a derivative and empty.

Like David Fincher, Tarsem Singh comes from the world of music videos where cutting-edge visuals are everything. It's no surprise then that The Cell is a pleasure palace for the eyes, constantly assaulting the senses with wild imagery that veers from the seductive to the uncomfortable to the truly horrific. Sadly, the imagery rarely manages to engage the viewer in the events on the screen. Nor does the story line itself create a complex enough world. The Cell is truly one of the clearest examples of production design triumphing (and not in a positive way) over substance.

The premise itself holds great promise. Serial killer Carl Stargher (Vincent D'Onofrio) is found in his home, having descended into a deep coma. But one of Carl's victims is still out there and, given Carl's M.O., has only forty hours to live. This is all good -- high stakes and a ticking clock set the stage for some potentially nail-biting drama. With time of the essence, FBI agent Peter Novak (Vince Vaughn) is ready to try anything to get into Carl's mind. Enter psychologist Catherine Deane (Jennifer Lopez), who has been successfully involved in a mind-melding experiment that allows her to literally enter a patient's inner world.

Naturally, Catherine agrees to the assignment and the challenges it presents. She isn't prepared, however, for what she finds. Carl's mind is awash in chilling memories from his childhood and his adult life. And, if Catherine stays inside too long, she's at risk of starting to believe that all these horrors are real. Eventually, Catherine does indeed get lost in Carl's mind, forcing Peter to go inside to save her and find the answers he so desperately needs. However, the eventual closure that both Peter and Catherine achieve is mostly hollow.

As mentioned, director Singh draws on numerous sources for the film. There's Damien Hirst, nods to photographers Flora Zigismundi and Dave La Chapelle, "cannibalized" scenes from Seven and Silence of the Lambs and left-over wardrobe from Francis Copolla's Dracula. Such references can be fine when they enrich the world of the film. In The Cell, however, they are the film.

When Singh isn't sure what to do next, he simply offers up a striking but not wholly successful visual. Sometimes, it's lyrical -- falling cherry blossoms -- but more often than not it's horrific. In particular, there's a reliance on sadomasochistic fantasy and fetishism that is less shocking than it is disappointing. It's not their cruelty or weirdness but rather the bland titillation to which they resort. While visually arresting in the moment, they are neither arousing nor truly disturbing.

Still, Singh can't be held completely accountable for the film's failure. Someone had to write a script first and it's unlikely that the reliance on imagery over plotting was Singh's alone. Much of the blame falls squarely on the shoulders of writer Mark Protosevich, who knows how to hook the audience with a cool set-up but then fails to offer up the complexity needed to really bring this dreamscape to life. He's more interested in the gimmick, abandoning his characters to the netherworld of emotional development.

Of the three stars, Jennifer Lopez -- looking suitably lovely in her myriad of fairy tale costumes -- is the only one who gets to dig in her heels a bit, but in the end, she's still the same gutsy shrink she always was. Vincent D'Onofrio, whose work is usually brilliantly multi-layered, is completely wasted. He captures the predictably unstable soul of Carl (and gets to wear some cool costumes), but he never gets to move beyond that. Finally, there's Vince Vaughn who, quite simply, is the wrong man for the job. Indeed, Vaughn seems so utterly out of his element here that he throws off the balance of the film, failing to convince us that he's a brilliant FBI agent and looking like he was hired in the middle of shooting and still doesn't know his lines.

In a summer of singularly unremarkable films, The Cell had the potential to be a breakaway surprise. It's regrettable that neither the director nor the writer had the insight to realize that immediate stimulus is no substitute for true drama or emotion. It would seem that, just like the commercial world from which Singh comes, "Image is Everything." Had he and Protosevich considered the power of story as well, The Cell might have lived up to its promise.