STAY — ** — Ewan McGregor, Ryan Gosling, Naomi Watts; rated R (profanity, violence, gore, drugs, vulgarity).

Since it runs less than 100 minutes, "Stay" doesn't hang around long. But the foul aftertaste of its "gotcha!" ending lingers.

The film treads the same ground as the recent independent film "November" (they share a similar concept and conclusion). And like a lot of psychological thrillers that have come since, this one is clearly modeled after the 2001 Sundance Film Festival smash "Memento."

Unlike that film, though, this one is more headache-inducing than mind-blowing.

Ewan McGregor stars as Sam Foster, a psychiatrist who's "inherited" a few patients from an ailing colleague. Sam is concerned about one of them: Henry Letham (Ryan Gosling), an art student prone to fits of depression and acts of self-mutilation.

Now Henry is threatening to commit suicide, which has Sam racing to discover the cause of his new patient's problems. But the deeper he digs into Henry's past, the more his own reality seems to be coming apart. But because of confidentiality concerns, Sam can't talk about the case with his live-in girlfriend Lila (Naomi Watts), who once attempted suicide herself and who might be able to share a few insights with him.

The cast almost seems to be going through the motions, with each giving robotic line readings. And McGregor has replaced his natural Scottish accent here with a fakey American accent that he apparently learned from watching Hugh Laurie (of TV's "House, MD").

Aloofness may be what director Marc Forster ("Monster's Ball") was going for, but the numerous music-video touches here also suggest he was less interested in getting credible performances out of the actors than producing film "art."

To be fair, he and cinematographer Robert Schaefer do capture a few striking images, but that's certainly not enough to merit sitting through this convoluted muddle of a movie.

"Stay" is rated R for occasional use of strong sexual profanity, violence (including acts of self-mutilation, an animal attack and vehicular violence), some gore, drug content (mostly references, as well as hypodermic needle use), and use of some vulgar slang terms and other sexually suggestive dialogue. Running time: 98 minutes.

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