Somewhere at the core of Horsemen there is a good idea and a riveting premise. The execution, however, is all style and too little substance. There may have been a great screenplay at the beginning of the development of this project, but if there was, it got into the wrong hands along the way. The end product is a mess, like Frankenstein's monster, as if it were pieced together from material from past, better films. <br /><br />Every single "serial killer on the loose" movie cliché is lined up, making Horsemen a tribute to these flicks or a "best of" compilation at best and a sad copy at worst. There is a neat twist almost half way through that cannot be described without spoiling the central premise, the only truly interesting part in the film, but in the end nothing remotely remarkable is done with it. <br /><br />I am very sure that the people at Platinum Dunes are very good at what they do and they consciously aim their releases at a specific genre audience and most of their films are a success in that respect (I liked the raw energy of the Friday the 13th remake) but Horsemen is a failure of diabolical proportions. Dennis Quaid looks like he's sleepwalking through his role and his character is ridiculously clichéd. The rest of the cast cannot really do anything with their roles either, their characters being sketches at most  there is not one credible personality in this film's universe. <br /><br />Photography is great, though: the film looks slick  just like an episode of CSI. The similarities do not end there; there are even a couple of those CGI zooms into wounds accompanied by a metallic sound. In fact, the whole film reminds me of an episode of a Bruckheimer TV procedural, only somewhat more gruesome. <br /><br />Thankfully brief, Horsemen clocks in at a mere 80 minutes, but there isn't a single memorable moment in the entire experience. The "message" or "controlling idea" in the end ultimately turns out to be pretentious and very shallow. This idea could have been worth a much better execution  no pun intended.