Obsessed (Blu-ray)

Connect to Facebook/Twitter, recommend via email and much more.

---

There's no question about it: Judging by this 2009 thriller, "Obsessed," Beyoncé Knowles has a great career ahead of her as a singer.

Unfortunately, Ms. Knowles doesn't sing in the picture. It is, in fact, her first screen appearance where she doesn't sing. Maybe she should have. It would have improved things.

The fact is, Knowles is not at all bad, nor are any of the other actors; it's the movie that's bad, a variation on the old "Fatal Attraction" ploy.

Everything in the film proceeds according to formula. We start with an ideal couple: Sharon (Knowles) and Derek Charles (Idris Elba). They have been married for three years and have a beautiful baby boy. Derek is the executive vice president of an L.A. asset management firm; the couple live in a plush, three-story home in a ritzy suburban neighborhood; and they drive recent-model Mercedes-Benz and Cadillac automobiles. Life is good.

Then a new temp, Lisa Sheridan (Ali Larter), shows up at Derek's office. She wangles her way into a job as Derek's personal assistant and becomes obsessed with him. She appears, outwardly, as intelligent as she is gorgeous, but we know she's up to no good when the music becomes ominous whenever she shows up

When wife Sharon meets the new temp girl, it doesn't take her long to get jealous, but Derek assures her that Lisa is only there for a short while. Meanwhile, it doesn't take long for the audience to wonder what Lisa's motives are in hanging around Derek so much. Is it innocent infatuation? Is she conniving, plotting some sort of extortion scheme? Or is she just crazy? If the filmmakers had followed that line of doubt, the film might have built some tension or suspense. But neither director Steve Shill (a prolific TV director doing his first feature film) nor screenwriter David Laughery ("Lakeview Terrace," "Flashback") seems at all interested in creating tension or suspense so much as boring us to death with talk and then shock and awing us with stupidity. Haven't any of the filmmakers seen a Hitchcock movie?

I mean, everyone in this film acts stupidly. The story quickly reveals that Lisa is not devious or cunning; she's simply sick and delusional. She creates fantasies about Derek loving her, and at an office Christmas party she pushes herself on him in the men's room. Derek pushes her away immediately, but he tells no one except his close friend and colleague Ben (Jerry O'Connell) about the incident. When Lisa continues to come on to Derek, he keeps it a secret. Apparently, he has never read a newspaper or watched a TV broadcast about the scandals of famous politicians, so he doesn't understand the consequences of keeping sexual encounters a secret...or denying them. The one time he does determine to tell his wife about this deluded woman stalking him, it's at the exact moment when Sharon has gotten off the phone talking to one of her female friends who's in tears about her husband admitting an affair to her. Derek decides that it might not be the best time to spring his own secrets on her. It's a coincidence worthy of the best (or worst) daytime soap opera.

For her part, Sharon remains rational for a longer period than anyone else in the story, but then when she finds out about Lisa's advances, she goes completely nuts. Par for the course in this film.