“Conspiracy of Fear” is another “future is the past” slice of sci-fi noir, a shiny but emotionally empty thriller that lacks the suspense, intrigue and pretty much anytbing else to recommend it.

But it’s another B movie featuring Malcolm McDowell as a seemingly urbane villain, so there’s that.

An exposition-packed voice-over narration by a private eye tells us that a decade has passed since World War III, which climaxed with electro-magnetic pulse blasts that fried everything electronic. The world is analog again, with newspapers, landlines, cathode ray tubes, celluloid photography and vintage Chevy Novas making a comeback.

Capitalism? It collapsed into one great big monopoly, with The Company running everything that got the world back to work.

But a virus came roaring in after the conflict, one with symptoms similar to rabies. Big pharma concocted Suppresco, a “little white pill” that allows “purists” to live without catching it and the infected to suppress symptoms.

Reporter/poker player Alice, expressionlessly played by writer-director Kayla Tabish, is being watched because of what she’s been told about Suppresco’s latest iteration. There’s a kid on the run she’s trying to protect.

That private detective (Nick Lima Heaney) has been hired to find the girl on the lam by the knife-wielding heavy Vega (Steven Baeur). Will Gumshoe Avery switch sides because “She’s just a kid” or the reporter’s easy on the eyes?

Is that a grimace we detect every time the esteemed Brit character actor McDowell mispronounces (intentionally, “in character” we hope) the name of Halley’s Comet, which is due to return in 2061, which barely figures in the movie’s plot?

A high stakes “Company Money” game of Texas Hold’em opens the film, with our intrepid reporter looking more deer-in-headlights than poker faced. Tony bars, clubs and a party fill the middle acts. And double crosses abound in the finale.

But the whole never amounts to much more than antiques-adorned/production-designed-to-death tedium.

Rating: TV-14, violence

Cast: Malcolm McDowell, Kayla Tabish, Nick Lima Heaney, Steven Bauer and Edoardo Costa.

Credits: Scripted and directed by Kayla Tabish. A Vision Films release on Youtube, Tubi, Amazon etc.

Running time: 1:25