Beauty beats brains in silly ”Mindhunters”

Don’t bother searching for signs of intelligence in “Mindhunters.”

Shamelessly lifting ideas from “Final Destination” and “The Silence of the Lambs,” the thriller mucks its way through one gruesome demise after another. Heads roll, maggots squirm, felines perish, sharp objects fly and plot twists pile up until the whole thing collapses in a pool of inanity.

Fans of Christian Slater and Val Kilmer should note that although the actors are billed as prominent cast members, they are really just cameo players. LL Cool J is the true headliner, and he’s backed by an ensemble of vaguely familiar performers.

Delayed in release for more than a year, the film places a group of FBI recruits on a remote island for a training exercise in which they must track a serial killer who commits a series of simulated crimes. The drill turns into an actual bloodbath when a mysterious villain begins dispatching the sleuths via bizarre deathtraps.

One by one, the students are slaughtered by a culprit who warns of the next death by planting watches near the victims (sometimes inside them). Each crime is personalized in ways that reflect the victims’ weaknesses of character. Because the rogue kills with such insight, the survivors suspect each other, pointing guns, barking questions and spouting conspiracy theories ad nauseam.

The characters are introduced as the government’s brightest young bulbs, probing the psyches of those around them even when they’re unwinding at a bar. The script, by Wayne Kramer (“The Cooler”), doesn’t give them anything particularly deep to say. Their keen observations run along the lines of, “The killer isn’t after the FBI. He’s after infamy.”

For the most part, the movie is butcher shop schlock, but there are a couple of well-choreographed surprises. It’s a shame that one of the most effective jolts is revealed in the trailer.

A picture so laden with gore and light on originality should at least have a sense of humor about itself. Director Renny Harlin (“Die Hard 2”) seems to be under the delusion that he’s crafting something new and important, keeping the proceedings wink-free and cluttering the screen with psychoanalytic signs and symbols.

LL Cool J, playing a savvy police detective on hand to observe the trainees, is the only actor in the film who knows he’s in a cut-rate creepshow and has fun with it. The rest of the cast members amateurishly munch scenery or drift about in a photogenic stupor.