EVERY BREATH YOU TAKE : Tuesday 27th April 2021.

I saw 'EVERY BREATH YOU TAKE' earlier this week, and this MA15+ Rated American thriller offering is Directed by Vaughn Stein in only his third film making outing after 2018's 'Terminal' and 2020's 'Inheritance'. This film has been in development since 2012 when Rob Reiner was slated to be Directing this film, and over the years that followed that mantle passed to Christine Jeffs in October 2019 before Vaughn Stein was announced as Director in December of that year. Costing US$10M to produce, the film was released in the US in early April to largely unfavourable Reviews. 

Here our film opens up with a car travelling down some deserted highway in Washington State - a big moon in the corner of the shot. We then cut to inside the vehicle which is being driven by Mum Grace Clark (Michelle Monaghan) and her young son Evan (Brenden Sunderland) in the back seat, the pair swapping jokes. Evan is wearing an ice hockey outfit and holding onto a new pair of ice skates, and clearly somewhat reluctant about his debut game. Then out of nowhere, a pick up truck slams straight into the car being driven by mother and son. For one of them it's fatal - and it's not mother Grace.

We then fast forward three years to a lavish isolated home in the hills. Grace is swimming laps in the outdoor heated lap pool while psychiatrist husband Phillip Clark (Casey Affleck) listens intently and takes copious notes from what his patients reveal to him about the inner most thoughts, anxieties and depressions. We subsequently learn that Evan was Grace's only son by a former marriage, and Phillip has a troubled and angst ridden teenage daughter Lucy (India Eisley) also from a former marriage, who was expelled from high school only one week ago because she snorted a line of cocaine in the laboratory during a class. 

One of Phillip's patients is a young 23 year old woman named Daphne (Emily Alyn Lind), who has a history of psychosis in the family and several failed suicide attempts, on whom he performed radical therapy by sharing things about his own personal life and revealing his thoughts and actions that he never even shared with his own wife. This empathetic behaviour, which is somewhat out of the box for psychiatrist's, is frowned upon by some colleagues, most notably Dr. Vanessa Fanning (Veronica Ferres), Phillip's Dean of Faculty at a local psychiatry institute where he also works. Fanning offers words of caution to Phillip, but he replies that Daphne after nine months of therapy has turned the corner, is off her medication, is happy with her life, is being creative for the first time in a very long time and is now in the throes of writing a book about her journey out of the darkness. The only remaining challenge for her is in trying to wrestle herself away from the overly controlling boyfriend. 

Soon afterwards Phillip receives a phone call while travelling home from Daphne who is distraught, saying that her long term best friend was killed in a hit and run accident. This sends Daphne into a downward spiral, although she commits to seeing Phillip the next day. However, the next day never comes, when Police arrive at their home to say that Daphne listed Phillip as her point of contact in the event of an emergency, and that she is now dead, having jumped off the balcony at home and cracked her skull open on the concrete below. Viewing the scene and identifying the body, her brother James Flagg (Sam Claflin) is understandably beside himself. 

A few days later James swings by Phillip's and Grace's home late in the afternoon to return a book that he had lent Daphne. Grace invites James in for dinner where he is more than charming, explains away his English accent, and that he is a failed first time novelist but is working on a second novel which he has higher hopes for. Lucy sends swooning glances James' way throughout dinner, while Phillip is somewhat wary. 

Over the next few days and weeks James gradually works his way into Lucy's life, and she is more than ready and willing to accept his advances. Meanwhile, James has also recruited Grace, who is also a real estate agent, to handle the sale of his sisters lavish home, and at the same time, begins to come on strong with her too. It seems that Phillip, Grace and Lucy have all retreated into their own little closeted worlds since the death of Evan three years ago with very little by way of communication, emotional support or intimacy to go around. 

At about the midway point Phillip comes to the realisation that James is the one behind a series of complaint letters sent to Dr. Fanning and the Washington State Board of Psychiatry about his alleged malpractices. His client base starts to dry up and pretty soon Phillip has lost the majority of his patients. James has been able to finagle his way into Phillip's life as a result of three years of silence and unprocessed grieving which Phillip opens upto Grace one evening asking for her forgiveness, which she grants him. In the meantime, Lucy has persuaded James to take her with him when he eventually leaves, and to get away to anywhere but here. That day is fast approaching. 

With Phillip's and Grace's fractured relationship seemingly repaired, James goes after Grace. In the passenger seat of his car sits Grace without a seatbelt because it is broken, with James tearing down the road at increasing speed. She begs him to stop, but he is not listening. She calls Phillip, and as James veers the car violently from side to side, Grace is knocked unconscious temporarily. James continues the conversation with Phillip telling him of their location. Phillip catches up just as James is about to drive headlong into a truck which would have resulted in the certain death of both. But seconds before, James veers and brings the car to a grinding halt averting a collision. With Grace safely out of the car and in Phillip's arms, James hurriedly drives off, grinning from ear to ear.

Later that night James hands himself into the authorities and is immediately sent to a psychiatric hospital for assessment. He demands to see Phillip as he is the only one he will speak with. Reluctantly Phillip attends an interview with James with Dr. Fanning and a consulting medical physician Dr. Toth (Hiro Kanagawa) in attendance. James comes clean, but clearly is showing signs of being mentally unhinged. Later that night over dinner with Dr. Fanning and her husband Stuart (Vincent Gale), Stuart presents Phillip with James' first novel which he had asked to procure. Turning to the back cover to read the bio of the author James Flagg, the photo of the author is not of the James Flagg that they know. Immediately alarm bells begin to ring. 

Phillip then attempts to call Lucy at home having deduced that James Flagg is a fake and he is in reality Daphne's over controlling boyfriend who threw the girl off the balcony and killed her. Phillip then calls the facility in which James is being held and warns Dr. Toth that there is an imminent danger and to go check on him. In so doing Toth discovers a dead orderly in James' room and no sign of James. While attempting to call Lucy, James has already rocked up to the Clark household, warmly embraced Lucy and told her to go and collect her things, they're leaving tonight. As Lucy goes to collect her bag, James enters the house after her, bolting the door locked from the inside behind him. He grabs Lucy violently and drags her kicking and screaming by the hair up the stairs and into a room with a balcony. By this time Phillip and Grace have arrived, gain easy access to the house, and immediately hear Lucy screaming upstairs. Phillip jumps on James and a fist fight breaks out with each raining down punches on to the other. Lucy and Grace both get thrown across the room, and with James straddling Phillip with his hands clenched tightly around Phillips neck, Grace renders two blows to James's back with Evan's brand new and unused ice skates, and when he reels in pain onto his back she lands another two blows to his chest. James crawls out of the room onto the balcony, rolls over on to his back and dies, just as Police sirens approach. 

'Every Breath You Take' has three fine Actors helming Director Stein's third feature film outing, and each give a solid enough performance, but that said this alone is not enough to lift this all too familiar predictable revenge thriller that offers little by way of surprises and the plot twists and turns you can see coming from a mile away. There is nothing new to see here that hasn't been done before, and better, in countless other similar pot boiling psychological thrillers, and when the end finally comes it all seems almost hurried and underdone, and, left me thinking of Russell Crowe's eventual demise in last years 'Unhinged'. 

'Every Breath You Take' warrants two claps of the Odeon Online clapperboard from a possible five claps.

-Steve, at Odeon Online-