Every Breath You Take ★★

Vaughn Stein

Starring Casey Affleck, Michelle Monaghan, Sam Claflin, Emily Alyn Lind, India Eisley

Ever since the likes of The Girl with Dragon Tattoo there has been a certain type of plodding thriller that has returned time and time again in different forms to make us equal parts tense and depressed. There’s often a protagonist with a secret, or something on their mind the whole way through, and then right at the end we enter their thoughts for a final twist that can be amazing or a little disappointing after all the build-up.

And so we unfortunately experience the latter disappointment for Vaughn Stein’s latest that stars Casey Affleck as a psychiatrist, whose client commits suicide. He finds his family life disrupted after introducing her surviving brother to his wife and daughter.

There’s nothing particularly wrong with this film other than it being a little throw away. The cold look and feel, as well as the slow build of the tense relationships between the main characters, are hinting at something greater which never materialises.

Everyone performs their parts well, with Affleck his usual cagey self, but there’s a sense that we have seen this all before and that’s ultimately where this one fails to grip.

Every Breath You Take available now on NowTV and Sky Cinema