“Perfect Stranger” was so perfectly bad that it made me wonder whether it’s time to bring some technical innovations to the theater experience just to give audiences some relief. For example, “picture in picture” technology could be used in the corner of the screen to show better movies playing in adjoining theaters. Or they could add a countdown clock on the screen so the audience can see exactly how many excruciating minutes remain. Or how about a walk-out counter at the top of the screen to show how many people leave the theater during the film and never come back?

"Perfect Stranger" is so utterly disjointed it feels like it's stitched together from scenes from other movies. The plot moves like a bicycle with a bent front wheel. Scenes crash together like cars on an icy interstate. The entire film wanders around like a child lost in a department store looking for its Mommy. Reporter Rowena Price (Halle Berry) teams with friend Miles (Giovanni Ribisi) to investigate a powerful ad executive, Harrison Hill (Bruce Willis), who’s surrounded by hotties and might (gasp) actually be boinking some of them. The only thing notable about this ensemble is that they’re perhaps the stupidest characters in the history of cinema. When reading online chats, Rowena moves her lips to “sound it out.” Not once, but twice, dramatic tension is derived from the fact that she doesn’t know how to turn off a computer and is reduced to banging on the keyboard in futility. Harrison, meanwhile, accepts such an utterly ridiculous excuse after discovering Rowena at his computer that you have to wonder if it’s meant to be a joke. It’s not, but by this point, many in the audience were laughing derisively anyway.

The film’s characters also say some shockingly stupid things. Rowena’s editor tells her that when a powerful figure kills a story, it’s known in the trade as “editorializing.” Harrison’s stab at a Gordon Gekko moment is when he says, “It’s not kill or be killed anymore. It’s kill or become irrelevant.” Huh? The film has all the insight and cadence of a bad high-school play. The only thing particularly surprising about the big reveal at the end is that the filmmakers attempt to justify it by retracing “clues” placed in what seems like an entirely different movie.

Given this and its itinerant, chat-centric plotline, I strongly suspect that “Perfect Stranger” may be the first movie ever written entirely in Instant Messenger. Either the filmmakers were unable to use more complex writing implements, or they intentionally used IM to produce a film of such spasmodic awfulness that it actually serves as a clever comment on our short-attention-span culture. If director James (“Glengarry Glen Ross”) Foley is cornered at a cocktail party, my advice would be to go with the latter explanation.