Fox is making much of the fact that "Intensity" is a faithful adapation of Dean Koontz's novel. That may be, but does that make four hours filled with 10 senseless, horrific killings entertaining?
No.You've got to question what kind of warped thinking brought this project to TV in the first place. This is definitely not the sort of thing you'd want to expose adults to, let alone children. And yet Fox/Ch. 13 will be broadcasting it at 7 p.m. tonight and Wednesday.
The story, such as it is, involves Chyna (Molly Parker), who seems to be having a dreadful run of bad luck. Through flashbacks, we see her childhood as the daughter of two drug addicts.
Her father was a sadistic monster who not only terrorized Molly but was prone to brutally murdering people who annoyed him.
As "Intensity" opens, however, things seem to be looking up. Now a college student, Molly is invited to spend Thanksgiving with a friend's seemingly perfect family.
But things take a nasty turn when all four family members are murdered by psycho killer Edgler Vess (John C. McGinley).
Molly, of course, escapes by hiding under a bed. Really.
But she doesn't really escape. Instead, she jumps in the killer's motor home to try to stop him.
Edgler isn't finished. Before "Intensity" is over, people are shot to death, cut to death, ripped to pieces by vicious dogs and burned alive. Some of these deaths are both brutal and lingering.
If that's not enough, Edgler is keeping a 15-year-old girl prisoner in his basement, attempting to break her grip on sanity before murdering her as well.
And he tells one of his victims his solution to all of the problems of the world.
"People don't realize just how happy they could be if they could just understand that the value of any experience isn't in its positive or negative effect," he says. "The value of any experience is in the intensity of the charge that you get from it."
That's why he never wears gloves - he might miss the experience of feeling "the warmth fade out of the body" when he kills.
This is four hours of TV without redeeming value. It's gruesome, but not particularly scary. And the violence soon becomes tedious.
"Intensity" also points up just how useless TV content ratings are. Fox has assigned this show a TV-14 - the same rating NBC slaps on "The Tonight Show."
If "Intensity" doesn't deserve the TV-MA rating - the television equivalent of an R - nothing does.