Magpie is a infidelity thriller that succeeds by creating a husband and wife with very particular personality traits and cranking up the tension. It works fairly well even as it delivers more pointed glances than actual dramatic moments.

It stars Daisey Ridley (the reason I watched it at all) as a wife and mother of a child actress who has just been cast in a movie. The husband (Shazad Latif) takes her to set and catches the eye of the co-star (Matilda Lutz). Soon Ridley is getting suspicious and Lutz is trying to get lucky.

Ridley notices things. She doesn’t tip her hand, but she’s onto what her husband is up to and gives good glances. Meanwhile, Lutz plays self-entitled and distracted. His main character trait are off-hand asshole comments to his daughter (and wife) just so we can be pretty sure we hate him.

Why this film didn’t instantly end with Ridley entering the offices of Cann I. D. Vorce Him and Howe, I don’t know. But the the movie has to have a plot and while not a lot “happens” beyond some solid eyeball work and sneering condescension, it does it at a smolder, just a few seconds away from exploding.

The reason I don’t rate this pretty good film higher is that it has a surprise ending that they clearly thought was meant to blow my socks into next week. But it didn’t… because I thought we already knew the twist. I mean, didn’t we? So I spent the final minutes thinking how much the director was unable to pull off his magic trick.

But maybe that’s just me and my galaxy brain <eyes roll>. I dunno. Maybe I’ve just seen one too many movies.

But other than that, I low-key likes this movie. Mainly for the acting and the dialog plus a solid bit of suspenseful direction. I kind of wish it did more or said more but most of what it did, it did well enough.

Score: 79