The real mystery - why was this so bad?

This was a pretty decent cast. Anthony Hopkins doesn't have to work in shitty movies, Ray Liotta's moment has mostly passed, but his recent turn in a TV series shows he's not completely expired and Julia Stiles has just enough star power to keep turning up in better productions.

IMHO, the reason this suffered was mostly a crummy script. It was such a by the numbers revenge story that you knew exactly what was happening. It would have been more interesting to have some kind of twist at the end; like Hopkins was the town's evil mastermind afterall, and Liotta was just a sideshow or maybe even the actual leering thug Stiles needed to protect her. Liotta is too much an obvious bad guy.

I'm just surprised something like this gets made. Hopkins was on screen a lot, so whatever he was paid he had to work for.