Review: The Lovely Bones (12A)***

The Lovely Bones details the efforts of a murdered 14-year-old schoolgirl to help her grieving father apprehend her killer.

In doing so, the girl's tortured spirit can attain lasting peace, along with the murderer's other victims.

Jackson's screenplay, co-written with wife Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens, is caught in its own limbo, unable to bridge the narrative divide between the corporeal and ethereal planes where the story unfolds.

On her way home from school in early December 1973, Susie Salmon (Saoirse Ronan) is lured to her death by neighbour George Harvey (Stanley Tucci), who dismembers the girl and hides her remains in a cast-iron safe in his basement.

The teenager's father, Jack (Mark Wahlberg), mother Abigail (Rachel Weisz) and booze-soaked grandmother Lynn (Susan Sarandon) are denied a chance to bury the child.

Jack sacrifices his marriage to embark on a tireless campaign to track down his daughter's killer.

The Lovely Bones is hamstrung by Wahlberg's inability to convey a single genuine emotion. He wrings crocodile tears in vain, and tries to make us care about his patriarch's quest for vengeance.

Meanwhile, George watches the Salmons closely from his home across the street, fixating on Susie's sister, Lindsey (Rose McIver).

On terra firma, we latch onto McIver, who breaks into George's house to seek clues just as he returns home in the film's nerve-shredding, standout sequence.

We are equally mesmerised by Tucci, who inhabits his role completely, and feel a chill down the back of our spines every time his soulless eyes bore into the camera.