WE BELONG TOGETHER

US, 2018, 83 minutes, Colour.
Draya Michele, Elise Neal, Brian White, Cassidy Frlain.
Directed by Chris Stokes.

This is a time-passer thriller. It belongs to that large group of films which could be filed under “Fatal Attraction� variations.

At the centre of the film is a former college professor who suffered the loss of a child through SIDS and then became alcoholic, spending some time in prison, rehabilitation, AA, getting his feet on the ground again and resuming his career. One of the difficulties of his character is the strong screen presence of at the variations in his character which do not quite gel – his grief, love for his wife and daughter, the alcoholism, the almost-easy infatuation with one of his students and beginning an affair, not seeing through her rather obvious fatal attraction approach, his quite inconsistent behaviour with her compared with his love for his wife and daughter.

The femme fatale is the young woman who claims to have served in Iraq but in fact, as we learn, has been in a mental institution with her brother, both accused of setting fire to the house and the deaths of their parents. At least she has credibility in being quite inconsistent in her behaviour, manipulative, absolutely obsessive, moving into violence.

There is a murder early in the piece which is then left for quite some time, audiences thinking it was the young woman but a revelation at the end that was her brother – no explicit explanations of why he did it and his relationship with his sister.

On the sentiment side, there is the ex-wife who is still in love with her husband but getting a divorce, her strong-minded mother, the young daughter to whom both are devoted.

Not essential viewing – except for those who are cataloguing all the fatal attraction thrillers.