Mothers’ Instinct feels like a trashy thriller stuck in first gear. It wants to be sordid and a little bit sleazy but it never figures itself out well enough to take that step. It’s not boring, but it is a big shoulder shrug of inconsequence.

The flick is about two married friends, each with a child about the same age. When one of those children dies to an accident, they are shattered. But the dead kid’s mom starts to get a little clingy over the living kid and tensions percolate a little bit. I mean rise. Tensions rise <glances at watch>.

This film is full of uncertainty and mystery as to exactly what’s going on and the motives and rationality of its moms (played by Jessica Chastain and Anne Hathaway). There are a series of unfortunate events that makes one of the ladies suspicious of the other, but the events are handled so low key they make the paranoia feel mundane and irritational. And maybe that’s the intent… to make it unclear who is the crazy..

All I know for sure is that I wasn’t invested because the drama just wasn’t tight or explosive enough. It existed on a pretty even, underwhelming level when it feels like the movie should just drop the act and get trashy. Or more twisty. Or more dramatic. Or more of anything.

And yet the acting is solid and I loved seeing Chastain and Hathaway do their acting thing. I wish they let loose more but clearly that was a director’s call to keep the movie trotting along.

Yeah, there’s better domestic-type thrillers but maybe those don’t star such luminous leading ladies. I wish they’d been paired up in something better though. It’s not bad though… it’s watchable, at least.

Score: 76