Unoriginal and no final thud

Cinema

The kindness of a good Samaritan is ruthlessly exploited by an unlikely predator in Neil Jordan’s campy psychological thriller.

Greta harks back to violent power struggles of 1990s potboilers The Hand That Rocks The Cradle and Single White Female asa 20-something American waitress and a sexagenarian French piano teacher lock horns on the mean streets of New York. Isabelle Huppert and Chloe Grace Moretz are handsomely matched as hunter and prey, investing underwritten roles with menace and tainted innocence.

Their performances energise and enthral in the absence of originality, which is abducted before first blood can be spilt. A claustrophobic final showdown, replete with sleight of hand, doesn’t quite land with the satisfying emotional thud or rush of adrenaline that the scriptwriters promise.