Obsessed

May 29 2009 by The Journal

landscape: obsessed (PA: DO NOT REUSE)

HELL hath no fury like a mentally unstable office temp scorned. More than 20 years after Glenn Close boiled Michael Douglas’s bunny, another sexually aggressive, blonde vixen sinks her polished nails into a happily married man.

Only here, with it being the morally upright 21st Century, the husband rejects the amorous advances but suffers nonetheless.

British television director Steven Shill, who jumpstarted his career on EastEnders, Casualty and The Bill, makes his feature-film debut with a script by David Loughery that plunders merrily from Fatal Attraction to The Hand That Rocks The Cradle.

Were it not for the casting of pop superstar Beyoncé Knowles (also credited as an executive producer) as the wife who decides to fight for her man, literally, rather than lose him, this schlock probably would have headed straight to DVD.

An opening montage of Derek Charles’s (Idris Elba), beautiful wife Sharon (Knowles) and young son Kyle moving into their new home handily signposts the entire finale with lingering shots of locations and dangerously-placed furniture.

Derek is executive vice-president at an LA finance company poised to land its biggest account, and everyone loves him. Trouble comes a-slinking into the building in the form of secretary Lisa (Heroes star Ali Larter), who wears a killer pair of black and red heels, like a certain carnivorous spider.

She quickly sets her sights on Derek and refuses to take no for an answer.

This is a generic thriller, enlivened by a hysterical final act, which sees Knowles’s full-time mother metamorphose into a snarling lioness, hungry for a showdown.

Larter tends to leave the loud theatrics to Knowles, while a largely ineffectual Elba shows surprisingly little common sense under pressure.

He leaves the women to sort it out themselves in the most dignified way possible: a protracted cat fight complete with hair-pulling, kicks to the face and Beyonce promising: “I’m gonna wipe the floor with you – who’s screaming now?”

Us, with laughter.