By 2010, Val Kilmer was a very long way from what passed as his glory days. The time when he could play much-loved heroes like Batman, Simon Templar or Madmartigan, or pop culture icons like Jim Morrison, were rapidly receding in the rear-view mirror of history and he was heading into straight-to-video territory. In 2015, his career was largely derailed by throat cancer that left him barely able to speak, though he recovered sufficiently to reprise one of his most fondly remembered roles, that of “Iceman” in Top Gun: Maverick (2022).

In Michael Oblowitz’s The Traveler, he turns up on Christmas Eve looking pasty-faced and bloated, as the unnamed stranger, dubbed Mr Nobody (the film’s alternative title) by the small group of cops manning the police station he seeks shelter in. He immediately confesses to six murders and is questioned by Detective Alexander Black (Dylan Neal) who is still haunted by the abduction and murder of his young daughter Mary. As Nobody confesses to his killings, the other cops start to die in grisly and spectacular ways that echo Nobody’s words. Flashbacks suggest that Nobody had been arrested for Mary’s murder and was brutally beaten by the officers who were on duty that night – all of them on duty this very night and growing increasingly panicky as their numbers dwindle.

The Traveler is a strange mishmash of bits and pieces filched from D.O.A. (1949), Se7en (1995), High Plains Drifter (1973) and Assault on Precinct 13 (1976) with an ending straight out of Jacob’s Ladder (1990). It brings virtually nothing new to the party, replacing suspense with gore (some of the killings border on the sadistic) and a few twists and turns at the end but as they’re the only vaguely interesting part of the film, they should perhaps remain unspoiled. The gore scenes are well served by some OK special effects but are at odds with the more enigmatic tone established by the opening act and the overtly supernatural goings-on later in the film.

The first reel sets up things quite intriguingly, but it soon degenerates into a string of murder set-pieces, but as the characters are so lazily developed, we just don’t care that much. How many times have we seen the distressed cop tortured by their past? Far too many one might argue. Perhaps it’s no surprise then that the cast are so glum and often almost comically intense, a morose and wooden bunch of stereotypes, the cast all looking like they’d rather be anywhere else than here. Christmas sits in the background but plays virtually no part in the film at all – if there was any relevance to the setting, it’s not at all clear what it might be. Is Nobody meant to be some sort of murderous messiah? Your guess is as good as any. The title too is a bit of a head-scratcher. Who is this eponymous “traveler”? Nobody? If so, where is he travelling to and from?

All of these faults are attributable to Joseph C. Muscat’s screenplay that has a decent – if terribly derivative – idea at its core but which feels like it needed one last rewrite to polish off the many rough edges. As a tightened-up episode of The Twilight Zone, it might have passed muster. As it stands, it’s more Saw (2004) than Serling, a baggy and very silly film that’s eminently forgettable and which pales considerably beside the films it’s lifting most of its best moves from.

Dull characters trapped, for the most part, in an equally uninspiring single location acting out some obscure pot that seemingly no-one had much confidence in makes for a tough hour and a half of anyone’s time. The slaughtered cops are, we’re led to believe, are getting everything they deserved, but Nobody is a bland avenging angel and Kilmer hardly strikes the powerful image the role deserves and needs.

Oblowitz has been a prolific director of music promos, straight-to-video thrillers like The Breed (2001) and The Ganzfeld Haunting (2014), and television films like Hammerhead (2005). None were all that interesting and The Traveler is about par for the course as far as his work goes – technically well done but so bland they leave no lingering impression whatsoever. Kilmer still had plenty of depths – both creatively and professionally – to endure in the coming years and, despite being far from at his peak here, is still arguably the best thing about The Traveler, a film otherwise almost entirely devoid of a reason to watch it.