Angel of Mine a strangely muted thriller

Angel of Mine is a tale of a grieving mother with a worrying fixation on someone else’s child, and is at times both compassionate and compelling enough to keep an audience invested and unsettled.

A strangely muted thriller, Angel of Mine probably would have done some decent box-office had it been released about thirty years ago.

Back then, movies like Fatal Attraction, Single White Female and The Hand That Rocks the Cradle turned over tons of bucks by making campy, crazed villainesses out of psychologically unstable women.

However, the times, they have moved on, and some welcome restraint and sensitivity is now in order when it comes to exploiting malfunctioning mental health for fun and profit.

Therefore a movie like Angel of Mine — with its tale of a grieving mother with a worrying fixation on someone else’s child — must be very careful about what storytelling spaces it should be entering.

Angel of Mine can be compassionate and compelling enough to keep an audience invested and unsettled.

Noomi Rapace (best remembered as Lisbeth Salander from the original Swedish-produced version of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo trilogy) plays Lizzie, a fragile, solitary woman who has never recovered from the loss of her daughter in a hospital fire.

Years later, while embroiled in a bitter custody battle with her ex-husband (Luke Evans) over their young son (Finn Little from the recent Storm Boy remake), Lizzie notices a child who bears a sorta-kinda resemblance to her dear departed offspring.

It isn’t long before Lizzie is hovering at the front gate of the home of little Lola (Annika Whiteley), and then posing as a prospective buyer of the property to get through the front door. Uh-oh.

Annika Whiteley and Noomi Rapace.

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Despite not being the most convincing liar you’ll ever see, Lizzie is quickly able to infiltrate Lola’s household in the interests of giving everyone a damn good stalking-to.

Rapace has a tough task here: conveying a character’s heavy emotional issues without making light of them for entertainment’s sake.

Though she clearly struggles at times, Rapace’s scenes opposite co-star Yvonne Strahovski (as the mother of Lizzie’s obsession) are both compassionate and compelling enough to keep an audience invested and unsettled.

ANGEL OF MINE (MA15+)

Director: Kim Farrant (Strangerland)

Starring: Noomi Rapace, Yvonne Strahovski, Luke Evans, Finn Little, Annika Whiteley.

Rating: **1/2

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Originally published as Angel of Mine a strangely muted thriller