Review: Every Breath You Take

Psychiatrist and college professor Casey Affleck, his realtor wife Michelle Monaghan, and rebellious teen daughter India Eisley are barely communicating. They are still struggling to cope after the tragic car accident death of the couple’s other, younger child a few years earlier. Affleck has a private practice where he treats patients via his own unique methods of empathy and sharing, patients like the troubled Emily Alyn Lind. Lind is currently writing a book about her own mental health struggles. One night, depressed and distraught Lind calls Affleck to tell him that a friend of hers has been killed in a car accident. Affleck is shocked when Lind turns up dead shortly after, the cops ruling it as a suicide. At the scene, Affleck meets Lind’s British-accented brother Sam Claflin, who is obviously emotional at his sister’s sudden demise. He’s about to make Affleck’s life a living hell, while also charming both Monaghan and sullen Eisley.

 

Did I travel back in time to 1991 or something? This 2021 Vaughn Stein (“Terminal” with Margot Robbie) film is an unwelcome and completely unpersuasive mixture of chilly arthouse drama and 90s ‘fill in the blank’ from hell psycho-thriller. Completely lacking in narrative flow, it’s also dreary and muted to the point of crushing boredom. And it’s not like the script by screenwriting debutant David K. Murray isn’t completely obvious at the start, you know exactly where it’s headed. Also not helping things is the schizo editing, the film is glacial-paced at times, too rushed at others. While much of it is a muted, low-key drama-thriller, the absurd finale goes the OTT 90s psycho-thriller route that stands out like a sore thumb. You feel like large chunks have been left on the cutting room floor to the detriment of both narrative flow, and even in making sense of the story’s period of duration. It’s really shoddy filmmaking and the writing frankly isn’t any better.

 

Truth be told, the acting isn’t much help either. Although Sam Claflin makes a more than decent showing as the charming English bad guy, almost all of the other performances seem distressingly remote. It results in making most of the characters appear strangely removed from the story in which they inhabit. Claflin provides the only life/blood to the whole thing, though India Eisley is hardly miscast as the moody daughter. It’s her one thing as an actress. I was much less convinced by Casey Affleck as a shrink, I think co-star Michelle Monaghan had more of the right demeanour to play a therapist. Sadly she ends up wasted playing the wife/partner role for the umpteenth time. Affleck is distressingly reticent in the part and is mumbling his way through a role yet again. It’s not just the character, it’s Affleck himself half-arsing it and being massively miscast. The man can act, but needs the right role and he needs to enunciate a lot better for crying out loud. It’s getting annoying, Casey. That reticence – bordering on boredom – simply won’t do for the role of a shrink known for practicing empathy. We also get a completely wooden supporting performance from Veronica Ferres (an experienced German actress unfamiliar to me) as Affleck’s professional colleague. If you can understand enough words in their scenes together with Affleck’s mumbling, you have much keener hearing than I do. The film is nicely shot in a chilly, remote kind of way I guess. Other than that, this is a borderline disaster. It sort of seems like the intent was to blend a psycho-thriller with “The Ice Storm”, but the mixture is both pretentious and frankly offensive from a psychological stand point as well.

 

A psycho-thriller of the 90s non-PC mentality, this seriously disjointed, distressingly low-key film is really lousy stuff. Claflin is fine as the villain, but there’s a right way to do this kind of thing...and this film is the opposite of that. It’s the kind of end product that reeks of studio interference, or a studio that should’ve interfered. Chopped up within an inch of its life, there’s gotta be a story behind the making of and release of this film. One of the worst films of its year.

 

Rating: D