A shadowy figure approaches. "Who are you?" a woman asks. "What do you want?" A lamp flickers overhead. "I'm gonna SCREAM!" she shouts. Then a blond woman sits bolt upright in bed, panting and sweating, and her husband says, "Again?"

Ann Culver (Nicolette Sheridan) has someone else's eyes. After losing both her sight and her unborn baby in a car accident, she received a corneal transplant and has been seeing bizarre things: a little girl she doesn't know, a filthy construction site, a man coming toward her with a crowbar. Her husband and doctors think these visions are psychological--a manifestation of grief over losing her child. But Ann feels there's a better explanation: the disjointed images she sees are scenes from the life or rather, death of her eye donor. Who is the woman who gave Ann her eyes? And what is she trying to tell her now?

Possessed is the kind of movie you'd watch at 2:30 in the afternoon when nothing else is on. Called Deadly Visions in a former life, this made-for-TV movie played on the Lifetime television network late last year. I think it should've stayed there. On cable, the film is a decent way to kill two hours, but it doesn't do anything well enough or uniquely enough for me to pay for it.

The film is about witnessing someone else's past, and it certainly feels like I've seen everyone in it somewhere before. There's a nerd with a convenient area of expertise named Stephen, who works at the eye bank. Not only does he believe Ann's whacked-out theory; he's also familiar with this phenomenon, in an academic journal sort of way: "On super-super rare occasions, he tells her, "the last images a person saw before dying can be retained in the corneal tissue."

Ann begs Stephen to release her donor's name, and his breach of client confidentiality leads her to the murdered woman's parents. Mr. and Mrs. Angeletti have been raising their grandchild since their daughter Julie died. Young Sandy is an angelic child wise beyond her years whom Ann recognizes from her visions. Unlike her grandparents, Sandy harbors no rage, guilt, or denial. She accepts that her mother is gone. And just as fully, she accepts Ann and her psychic connection to her mom. "Mommy, can you see me?" Sandy asks, looking into Ann's eyes.

Mrs. Angeletti confesses that she doesn't believe Julie killed herself, as the detective's report concludes. She gives Ann the names of two suspects--Sandy's deadbeat dad and an old stalker boyfriend named Lon--and Mrs. Culver sets off for some Veronica Guerin-style detective work.

Her subjects are as nasty as expected. Sandy's father is a drug addict holed away in some roach motel apartment; Lon works in a junkyard and says things like, "A Southern boy like me don't know the word 'no' from a lady who really means 'yes.'" They're both creepy, but which one is the psycho who killed Julie?

Ann returns to eye-guy Stephen, who refers her to a psychic black woman in the park. She tells Ann to face her own painful past, and after some threats, an epiphany, an attack by someone who thinks she knows too much and a heart to heart with the little girl whose mother she has avenged, Ann makes peace with her donor and herself and the movie ends. Almost.

Although Possessed is filled with a host of uninspired clichés, it has islets of not-quite-brilliance. The movie's overall theme is nothing new: transplanted organs have given their recipients strange powers in movies like Body Parts and John Carpenter's horror anthology Mind Games. But the organ donors in those films are killers, not victims. Possessed's heroine sees through an innocent person's eyes. It's a subtle twist on an old theme.

Equally subtle is how the film connects Julie's daughter to the baby Ann lost. Yes, much of Ann's reawakened grief is made-for-TV typical: The little girl's presence overwhelms her with emotion and compels her to pore over old ultrasound photos. But in her visions, Sandy is blonder and has a ghostly glow -- she's Ann's fantasy of her own dead child.

I also liked Stephen, the eye-bank man. Though he's a minor and stereotyped character, actor Michael Eklund (House of 1,000 Corpses) fills out his boundaries well. Thanks to him, Stephen's nervousness, childlike ebullience ("This is awesome!" he exclaims when he discovers just what Ann's eyes can see) and desperate need for human contact are more endearing than annoying. It's really too bad that Eklund has such a small part; he makes Stephen so much fun to watch.

But the movie is not worth $27, and that's partly Lions Gate's fault. The disc has no extras whatsoever. (I'm sorry, but trailers and scene selections do not special features make). What's the point of releasing a made-for-TV movie on DVD if you're not going to add a commentary, at least?

Possessed is the hardest kind of movie to review. Neither godawful nor particularly enjoyable, it's a film I would've forgotten already if I didn't have to write about it. Though I liked it better after seeing it twice, I still wouldn't pay for the privilege. But if you're ever channel-surfing and come across Deadly Visions, stop at the Lifetime station and watch. There are worse ways to spend your time.