Apt Pupil

This latest effort from The Usual Suspects director Bryan Singer doesn't succeed in its examination of how the human heart can foment horrific evil. In Apt Pupil, Todd (Renfro) is a smart, morally vacant teen who happens upon a Nazi war criminal (McKellen) living in his small California town. Threatened with discovery, the old man answers the boy's ghoulish queries about the camps — first reluctantly, then with relish. This adaptation of a Stephen King novella averts its gaze from the heart of darkness — that Todd could be a nouveau Hitler youth. Yet sneering Renfro is perfectly cast and McKellen, in another wily performance (a blend of his roles in Gods and Monsters and Richard III), makes an apt death's-head with a soul full of schadenfreude. C+