There’s more urban renewal than genre renewal in Ernest Dickerson’s Bones, which at times suggests a kennel more than a movie. One character is a mangy dog apparition – “a servant of evil” – whose eyes, naturally, glow red. The other is Snoop Dogg, the grisly yarn’s lead. He flits in and out, playing a guy whose 1979 murder launches a modern-day ghost story.

Two young suburban brothers (Khalil Kain, Merwin Mondesir) buy a dilapidated brownstone in a ghetto in hopes of turning it into a trendy nightclub. Their business venture both infuriates and panics their father (Clifton Powell), a black man who has made a fortune through sketchy deals, married a white woman and has long taken the heat for both.

His reaction stems from an incident that occurred some 20 years earlier, when the brownstone’s original resident and local good guy (Dogg) drew the line at his partners’ scheme to deal crack in the neighborhood. As we see in flashback, Dogg’s Jimmy Bones character was killed in a kind of Et tu, Brute assassination. Now, he spends his days haunting the building.

For about an hour of this 90-minute wannabe chiller, you wonder if Dogg’s top billing is a teaser. He’s dead from the beginning and shows up only intermittently, as if he were just stopping by to look cool in his ear studs, shades and hat. His part gradually expands once he starts taking revenge on his betrayers while in ghostly form. And it’s around that time the bloodthirsty dog vomits thousands of maggots, which drop from the ceiling and into the drinks of nightclub patrons. It’s that kind of bad luck that will kill anyone’s grand opening.

Even when the renovation is in its most primitive state, the brothers manage to buy a bed – understandable when the movie’s female leads are lookers (Bianca Lawson for young admirers, veteran Pam Grier for dads). But once again, Dickerson – the tremendously talented cinematographer of Do the Right Thing and Malcolm X – has chosen to direct junk (Bulletproof, Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight) rather than to shoot a movie of class.

For trash connoisseurs, Bones gets mighty outlandish in its final scenes: more maggots and Dogg walking around carrying two talking severed heads. In truth, Dickerson is probably just filling a need; Halloween is near, and exhibitors have no doubt demanded that studios come up with something.

If grossness gives you the giggles, at least a couple of the movie’s effects indeed put a little “wow” in this cinematic bowwow.