There is a plot twist towards the end of the new woman-in-peril thriller No Good Deed that the producers were so concerned about not spoiling that they supposedly cancelled a national critics’ screening to keep the twist from being revealed. More likely, the actual reason for the cancellation was to keep critics from comparing Deed’s fictional story with the real life domestic violence tragedies involving Ray Rice and Oscar Pistorius that were prominently covered in the news this week. An even better reason for canceling the preview would be to keep critics from revealing to opening weekend audiences just how lame this thriller actually is.

For a movie that has all the trappings of a straight-to-DVD potboiler, No Good Deed offers a considerable amount of talent, both in front of and behind the camera. Stars Idris Elba and Taraji P. Henson are top-level television talents with notable feature film role credits as well, while director Sam Miller worked with Elba on several episodes of the acclaimed BBC series, Luther. Further, the stars, who also helped produce No Good Deed, put a good bit of effort into their performances. Despite this abundance of talent, however, the movie falls flat, primarily due to a highly predictable script.

Other than the one aforementioned plot twist (which is decent but not nearly on the level of those in The Crying Game or The Sixth Sense), viewers will be able to see every plot development in Deed well in advance. As the film begins, convict Colin Evans (Elba) is turned down for parole when one member of the parole board introduces evidence that Evans, who was a suspect in the brutal murders of several women but was only convicted on a separate charge of manslaughter arising out of a barroom fight, is a “malignant narcissist.” This diagnosis apparently means that he’s likely to get really, really angry when he’s crossed. Even without getting really, really angry, Colin manages to escape from the van on his way back to prison, kill his guards, and hightail it to Atlanta to meet his ex-girlfriend.

Although Colin professes his love for her, the girlfriend tells Colin she’s moving on with her life, which makes him really, really angry and her really, really dead. He then manages to crash his car and arrive on foot at the house of Terri, an attorney turned stay-at-home mom who’s mad at her husband for going off on a golfing trip with his father. So, when Colin asks to use their phone to call for help, she winds up inviting him in to get him out of a pouring rain, at least until the tow truck Colin supposedly called arrives.

Colin then engages in a bit of a cat-and-mouse game with Terri as he tries to nonchalantly flirt with her without coming on too strong. Of course, as he does so, he drops some not-too-subtle hints that he’s not right in the head, hints that the frustrated Terri doesn’t pick up on right away. Although this sequence is, relatively speaking, one of the best in the film, it’s also the least credible. One of the first things Terri reveals to Colin as they talk is that she’s a former prosecuting attorney who specialized in cases involving sex crimes against women. The fact that she’s completely oblivious to Colin’s increasingly apparent mental quirks is about as plausible as having a fireman throw a lit cigarette out of an open car window in a film. Of course, Terri does stumble onto the truth, quite literally. A friend (Leslie Bibb) comes to visit and comes on to Colin, but when she gets suspicious about his story, he gets really, really angry again, and Terri finds what’s left of her friend in the garage soon thereafter.

From this point on, No Good Deed resembles every woman-in-peril-from-a-crazed-stalker movie ever made as Colin threatens Terri’s children, torments her, and then gets really, really angry yet again. Fortunately for Terri, Colin proves to be the most inept stalker since Wile E. Coyote, as she is repeatedly able to bash him in the head with blunt objects, throw him down a flight of stairs, and even stab him. Admittedly, in most films of this nature, the screenwriters have to pull some strings to give a woman a realistic chance in a fight against a smart malignant narcissist, especially when he’s as physically powerful as Idris Elba. However, in No Good Deed, we are asked to believe that a man who coolly and quickly dispatches two prison guards and two women in about two seconds each conveniently becomes a complete klutz when pursuing Terri.

No Good Deed clocks in at a brisk 84 minutes, as if director Miller were under orders to deliver a movie that could fit in a two-hour Lifetime movie time slot (which this movie could have been with a couple of cuss words and about five seconds of violence edited out). By doing so, the movie squanders the potential of its actors and the rain drenched, dimly lit atmospherics that Miller so carefully establishes. Instead, Elba and Henson change their moods and their attitudes repeatedly during the course of their non-seduction scene. This sequence could easily have gone on twice as long as it did, with Colin’s menace only gradually becoming apparent. Instead, the mood of the sequence gets repeatedly broken, either by a broken kitchen window, the crying of Terri’s baby, or the arrival of her neighbor.

I actually didn’t have a problem with the rather sordid nature of the subject matter of No Good Deed. Violent crime is ugly, and any movie that uses violent crime as an essential plot element, including some of the greatest movies ever made, is, to a certain extent exploitative.  Norman Bates going after Marion Crane in a shower is just as exploitative (and much more shocking at the time) as a shower scene that occurs in No Good Deed. The problem in No Good Deed isn’t the subject matter; it’s the failure of the movie to make a more entertaining movie out of that subject matter.