By Jacquie Frost (Contributor) – Email
Print Edition: September 24, 2014
What would you do if a homicidal sociopath charmed his way into your home and threatened your family? New thriller No Good Deed explores this scenario — but leaves a lot to be desired.
After malignant narcissist Colin Evans (Idris Elba) is denied parole, he escapes from custody and goes on a minor killing spree. In addition to his murder charges, it is also believed that he is responsible for the deaths of five other women (though the film never confirms nor denies this).
When his car collides with a tree, he seeks help from our protagonist, Terri (Taraji P. Henson), a typical, exhausted mother of two. At first she welcomes him into her home with the intention of helping her neighbour and perhaps making a new adult friend. Unfortunately for Terri, her new friend is a violent sociopath.
But while the characters aren’t badly acted, they lack any real depth. None of them are very exciting or unique: we have the typical best friend, the husband that works too much, and friendly security guards. Even the narcissistic sociopath seems like a stock character. The entire movie could just as easily have been an episode of Criminal Minds.
The unoriginality isn’t terribly detrimental, as any audience familiar with the genre will immediately understand the characters, saving us from having to sit through too much exposition before the real action started. However, it does mean the film has little chance of being remembered once you leave the theatre.
This film’s only really memorable character is the protagonist, Terri. She isn’t the most original thriller protagonist, but she is very likable and smart. We understand why she lets the man in the house, why she starts to be suspicious of him, and why she has to pick her battles so carefully. Her two children are probably the most original plot point this film has to offer; every time she makes a decision she has to take their wellbeing into consideration. She can’t just bash him over the head with a lamp and run, because then she’d be leaving her children in the hands of a psycho.
No Good Deed certainly tries to fit into its genre; the scenes that are supposed to be tense certainly are tense. Unfortunately, the thrilling scenes should have made up the majority of the film, when they only made up about 20 minutes. Even those got repetitive quickly, and a lot of scenes that tried to be scary and sinister came off more like vaguely uncomfortable.
The film is mercifully short, with a running time of just under an hour and a half, but even then some scenes dragged on longer than they should have. In that time, the movie didn’t do anything new; even the final plot twist seemed random, and it really cheapened the entire message of the film. No Good Deed was not bad overall, just disappointing.
