In “Twisted,” Ashley Judd stars as Jessica Shepard, a newly-promoted homicide investigator with a keen eye for detail and a fondness for red wine and strangers she meets in bars. She and her new partner, Mike Delmarco (Andy Garcia), are assigned to a serial killer case in which all of the victims are men with whom Jessica has had one-night-stands. Jessica frequently blacks out because of her sometimes excessive drinking, leaving her whereabouts at the times of the murders a mystery and instigating paranoia about her possible actions while unconscious. The fact that her father was a cold-blooded-killer also makes Jessica a bit fretful in her quest for the truth.

Judd tends to play similar characters, so her film roles end up being carbon copies of each other . She establishes a character but doesn’t really develop it in the short time she is given, and this is true of her performance in “Twisted.” Garcia is marvelously creepy as Delmarco, delivering a solid performance as usual. King of Cool and D.C. native Samuel L. Jackson, as John Mills, the badass ass police commissioner and Jessica’s surrogate father, is unfortunately underutilized.

Overall, the script is less than stellar, although the ending is interesting. Even so, “Twisted” is about as original as a serial killer flick can get nowadays. But compared to what else is currently in theaters, this is not a bad choice.