Cold Comes the Night

There are at least two noteworthy aspects to this largely unremarkable thriller from a promising director of Sundance-friendly indie dramas. Cold Comes the Night features a genuinely bad performance from the hitherto flawless Bryan Cranston. How is this possible? It's like watching Rafael Nadal lose at table tennis to a Lolcat on YouTube.

Mr Cranston plays the Russian villain as a combination of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Terminator and Gary Oldman’s Dracula. That accent really will do nothing to calm the current tensions between Mr Obama and Mr Putin. Dropping definite articles and hissing his sibilants, Cranston could be auditioning for a part in a vintage FBI propaganda film on the red menace.

The tolerable Alice Eve plays the owner of a motel who finds herself menaced by a hood (poor Bryan) desperate to recover the proverbial suitcase full of money. They don't quite form a brittle friendship. The plot never satisfactorily locates a worthwhile twist. The villain's advancing blindness – less troubling when he needs to fire his pistol – doesn't have any obvious narrative purpose.

So what’s the second point of interest? Well, Ms Eve’s failing motel – to which murder comes – can’t help but remind the viewer of a certain 1960 Hitchcock film. This seems to be no accident. Oz Perkins, author of the script, is the son of Anthony. Spooky.