Ellie (Nia Long) and Marcus (Stephen Bishop) are recent empty-nesters who have sold up, left the city, and are starting a new chapter in a beautiful new home by the sea. Ellie is finishing up one last case before she’ll quit the firm and put up her own shingle nearer to home. But this one last case presents a wrinkle: her boss hires an IT “consultant” to help out (ie, obtain some emails in a less than legal way), and David (Omar Epps) isn’t exactly a stranger. Ellie and David went to college together, and it seems as though he may still be carrying a torch. A night out together turns a little steamier than Ellie meant so she puts an abrupt end to things, returning home to husband Marcus feeling more than a little guilty.

As if you couldn’t tell from the title, this is an extremely generic entry in the thriller-horror genre. It’s not called Happy Trust Exercise or Successful Long Term Relationship. It’s called Fatal Affair because David is obsessed with Ellie and he’s not going to let her marriage or indeed his own come between them. Obviously, the only reasonable way forward is a killing spree. Because the way to woman’s heart is stalking her family and murdering them in the face.

For any such plot to work, you’re going to have to accept that no one will answer their phones when they should, no one will call the cops when they should, no one will turn on a goddamned light when they should, and nobody remembers that David is a conveniently (for him) master hacker. Who is also oddly good at murder.

You know this movie. You’ve seen this movie. I mean, it’s brand new on Netflix, but you’ve seen a movie exactly like it at least half a dozen times. Its only saving grace is that Long, Epps and Bishop are very watchable, but when Long is forced by the script to break into David’s apartment even though she already suspects him of murdering his ex wife, there’s only so much she can do. These tropes are tired and the actors can try to inject them with fresh terror but this audience has seen it all and we’re not impressed. The only new ingredient director Peter Sullivan brings to the table is David’s murder hat, and even that’s nothing remarkable: it’s not a beekeeping veil or a Burker King crown or a half-ironic “60 and Sexy” trucker cap (which I only mention because my 6 year old nephew Ben recently inherited one from his great grandfather and wears it quite proudly). There’s nothing glaringly wrong with this movie, it’s just so overfamiliar that it saps all pretense of thrill right out of it, and a thriller without a thrill is just an er, a disappointing er.