Paul Schrader's Kickstarter-assisted micro-budget feature ($250,000 all in, apparently) is bookended with images of derelict movie houses and destitute projection booths, and includes an author's message exchange about how no one actually likes going to the movies anymore. This would be more poignant if the surrounding drama offered some sense of the great lost age of cinema for which old man Schrader hankers. Instead, we have a straight-to-video erotic thriller with irksome auteurist pretensions that merely confirms Schrader as an all-but spent force (it's been largely downhill since the dismal Dominion) and nails Bret Easton Ellis as a one-trick pony. Although the writer has complained that his script – a vacuous tale of unconvincing Hollywood "types" screwing, double-crossing and stabbing each other, front and back – was a "pranky" noir pastiche made drearily portentous by its director, much of the dialogue remains undeliverable in any register. Porn star James Deen is slightly better than expected as sleazeball rich-kid Christian; Lindsay Lohan slightly worse than you'd hope for as his partner, tormented Tara; everyone else is utterly forgettable. Lacking the wit and insight of Auto Focus, this finds Schrader still obsessing about sex, lies and videotape in glamorous glassy houses at which you will want to throw bricks.