No Good Deed

This tense thriller sees Taraji P Henson play a mother fighting to get through the night when an escaped killer (Idris Elba) turns up on her doorstep during a storm. So often the antihero, Elba makes the most of his imposing stature and booming voice to create an effective villain. He faces off with Henson's believable (if somewhat naive) heroine, and the pair carry the film ably. It's a shame, then, that these charismatic performances are at the service of an utterly unoriginal story. The plot stumbles lazily from one thriller trope to the next and, while it does provide some jumps, is predictable to the point where you can call the action before it happens. Matters aren't helped by rather heavy-handed direction, using flashbacks and hoary visual techniques to hammer points home. While serviceable as a late-night thrill, No Good Deed falls into a trap of genre familiarity from which it cannot escape.